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Locust Chapel, where the author first attended church and Sunday school. 
A typical rural church at the close of the pioneer period 




A schoolhouse and preaching appointment of the pioneer period 



THE RURAL CHURCH 
MOVEMENT 



BY 

EDWIN L. EARP, Ph.D. (Leipzig) 

Professor of Sociology, Drew Theological Seminary 
Madison, N. J. 




THE METHODIST BOOK CONCERN 
NEW YORK CINCINNATI 



&*» 



Copyright, 1914, by 
EDWIN L. EARP 



MAY 29 1914 
©C1.A374262 



f 



TO MY FOUR BROTHERS AND FOUR 
SISTERS, WHO SHARED WITH ME 
THE STRUGGLES AND THE JOYS 
OF LIVING IN THE OPEN COUNTRY. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Locust Chapel and a Schoolhotjse Frontispiece 

Preface 9 

CHAPTER I 

The Open Country's Call for Spiritual Leadership 13 

The Open Country 15 

The Call for Leadership 16 

The Kind of Leadership Required 20 

Factors that Make Such Leaders 23 

Life Investment in the Open Country 30 

CHAPTER II 

The Rural-Mindedness of the Prophets and of 

Jesus 33 

Other Social Movements with a Scriptural Back- 
ground 33 

The Rural Survey Outlined by Moses 36 

The Rural Survey and Program of Jesus 39 

Illustrations of the Rural-Mindedness of the Prophets 

and of Jesus 42 

The Rural-Mindedness of the Prophets 43 

The Rural-Mindedness of Jesus 46 

CHAPTER III 

The Spiritual Conquest of the Germanic Peoples a 

Rural Achievement 49 

The Pre-Reformation Period 50 

The Lutheran Reformation 56 

The Modern Rural Movement in Germany 59 

5 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER IV page 

The Rural Church and the Pioneer Period in 

America 61 

The Character of the Pioneer Period 62 

The Character and Function of the Pioneer Preacher 

and the Pioneer Church 63 

Application of Pioneer Principles to Present Needs . . 66 

The Basis of Appeal 68 

The Church Harmonized with Known Conditions .... 69 

CHAPTER V 

The Period o^ Rural Church Decline 71 

Typical Facts of the Church's Decline 72 

The Causes of Decline in the Rural Church 76 

Deductions from these Facts and Causes 80 

CHAPTER VI 

Awakening of Interest in the Country Church. ... 83 

Economic Facts the Dynamic of the Movement 85 

Leaders of the Rural Life Movement 86 

The National Social Consciousness Awakened to the 
Importance of Conservation of the Religious Re- 
sources of Country Life 89 

Specific Surveys of Rural Regions 92 

Other Factors in the Rural Awakening 94 

CHAPTER VII 

The Social Center Parish Plan 97 

The Plan 99 

Its Value as a Socializing Agency 103 

How the Plan Can Be Worked 105 

CHAPTER VIII 

The Social Function of the Rural Sunday School. 108 

The Social Conditions Affecting the Sunday School. . 109 

Other Social Conditions Affecting the Sunday School. 113 

The Social and Political Value of the Sunday School. 116 

6 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER IX page 

The Rural Bible Class 123 

Some Practical Things a Rural Bible Class Can Do. . 123 

Organize itself as a real working force; survey the 
community; study economic facts; look after public 
schools; study problem of public health; study the 
liquor traffic; study the normal factors of success; 
study wholesome play and recreation; make the Bible 
a more real book; note and provide against plant 
pests and soul pests; become a force in teaching 
patriotism. 

CHAPTER X 

Cooperation and Federation of Rural Churches. . . 133 

Denominational Cooperation in Rural Life 135 

Interdenominational Cooperation. . 139 

Church Federation 141 

CHAPTER XI 

The Christian Associations in the Rural Church 

Movement 144 

The Practical Points of its Program 147 

World Factors at Work, the Outgrowth of the 
Christian Association Movement 150 

CHAPTER XII 

A Suggested Home Missions Policy for the Rural 

Church Movement 154 

The Reasons for a Definite Home Missions Policy in 
the Rural Field 155 

The Policy Outlined 161 

Selected Bibliography 172 

Index 174 



PREFACE 

The writer believes there is no field 
for life investment in the real issues of 
the kingdom of God on earth so prom- 
ising of results to the man who wants to 
deal in "big futures" as that of the church 
in the open country, because it contains 
one half the population of our great coun- 
try; and, without intending a reflection 
upon any other part of the national 
household, he thinks, the better half. Be- 
lieving the problem of spiritual leadership 
to be the most important factor in the 
country-life problem, I have treated the 
subject of the open country's call for 
such in the front of the work; and as the 
home missions activities of the churches 
are also vitally involved, I have placed 
emphasis upon a suggested home missions 
policy at the close of the work. 

The idea of putting the other chapters 
in the logical order of a more or less his- 
torical treatment of the country church 
as a movement was first suggested to me 

9 



PREFACE 

by Mr. Albert E. Roberts, international 
secretary of the County Work Department 
of the Young Men's Christian Association, 
who asked me to give a course of lectures 
at the Silver Bay Summer School for 
Leadership last summer. The splendid 
reaction of the men at Silver Bay, of a 
favorable character, and a like response 
of the class in Rural Leadership at Drew 
during the winter, and the encouragement 
of men like Mr. Henry Israel, editor of 
Rural Manhood, and of Professor Harold 
W. Foght, chief of field service in rural 
education, United States Bureau of Edu- 
cation, and also the many inquiries which 
come to my desk from young ministers 
in the open country, have been the decid- 
ing factors in giving this volume to the 
public when there are already so many 
good things written on the subject of 
the country church. 

My main purpose has been to select 
out of the history of the movement those 
outstanding facts and methods that have 
been of value and apply them to the 
conditions in rural life the church is now 
facing, showing those to be adapted to 
10 



PREFACE 

new plans, and those, because no longer 
useful, to be discarded. 

The author is not unmindful of the 
splendid successes being won by men in 
some of the country churches, the record 
of which has appeared in the leading 
periodicals of the religious press. It is 
with the hope that the entire Rural Church 
movement will become so thoroughly organ- 
ized on an intelligent cooperative basis in 
social sympathy, that all the legitimate 
church enterprises in the open country 
may be likewise successful, that these 
chapters are written and published in 
usable form both as a text for the class 
and as a volume for the general reader. 

Edwin L. Earp. 

Madison, New Jersey. 



11 



CHAPTER I 

THE OPEN COUNTRY'S CALL FOR 
SPIRITUAL LEADERSHIP 1 

The report of the Commission on Coun- 
try Life appointed by President Roosevelt 
during the last year of his administration 
lifted the vast rural domain of the United 
States like a new continent into the con- 
sciousness of the American people. Grow- 
ing out of the disclosures of this com- 
mission and the findings of other leaders 
in rural life through surveys in different 
regions, we have begun to talk and act 
in a constructive way concerning the re- 
claiming of soils, reforestation of denuded 
areas, prevention of floods, and utilization 
of wasted water power, and also regaining 
for this vast resource field its priority 
of leadership. In the open country has 
been developed in the past the splendid 
heroic individuality that has produced the 
religious, moral, economic, and political 

1 Compare my article in The Bible Magazine for April, 1914. 

13 



THE RURAL CHURCH MOVEMENT 

leadership of all the ages, while at the 
same time it is here we discover to-day 
the greatest national waste of resources 
natural, human, and spiritual. In other 
words, we discover among other pressing 
needs of country life that of leadership; 
and no call of the open country in this 
regard is more urgent than that of spiritual 
leadership to make our new rural civiliza- 
tion Christian. And, furthermore, I do 
not believe there is a more important 
field open to trained men and women 
to-day than that of leadership in our 
vast rural domain which in more than a 
material sense is the resource field of the 
nation's life. There is no part of our 
national domain, not excepting the con- 
gested quarters of our great cities, that 
needs better trained spiritual leaders than 
that of the open country. 

As space permits we will treat of 
(1) The Open Country, (2) The Call 
for Leadership, (3) The Kind of Leader- 
ship Required, (4) Factors that Make 
Such Leaders, (5) Life Investment in the 
Open Country. 



14 



THE OPEN COUNTRY'S CALL 

The Open Country 

Since we are dealing with people, and 
not merely with land, we consider that 
part of the population as distinctly rural 
which is grouped in villages or towns not 
to exceed twenty-five hundred in number, 
and that part of the national domain 
where farmers and other country folk live 
in houses more or less isolated from each 
other and where distances must be traveled 
to reach the school, the church, and the 
store. 

In the United States the open country 
includes over one half of the population, 
and in only six of the forty-eight States 
was there a decrease in rural population 
during the last decade covered by the 
thirteenth census, while eight increased in 
rural population over 50 per cent; six 
from 30 to 50; two from 20 to 30; ten 
from 10 to 20 per cent; and only sixteen 
increased less than 10 per cent. The 
value of farm property for the same period 
increased over 100^ per cent, and aggre- 
gates more than forty billions of dollars. 

The open country not only includes 
this vast population and aggregate of 
15 



THE RURAL CHURCH MOVEMENT 

wealth, but also includes all kinds of 
climate and many varieties of soil and 
degrees of fertility. One must travel far 
to get the proper perspective of the vast 
reaches of the open country as well as 
the great contrasts of land area and soil 
fertility. For example, there is quite a 
contrast between the washed-out mountain 
country of Virginia and East Tennessee, 
where a traveler in questioning a native 
by the roadside, leaning against a remnant 
of a worm-fence, as to why he didn't 
speak louder, got the reply, "The land 
is so poor down here a fellow can't raise 
his voice," and the rich prairie land of 
central Kansas, where it is said a settler 
from New England couldn't raise pump- 
kins because the vines grew so fast they 
wore the blossoms off before the young 
pumpkins could get a fair start. 

The Call for Leadership 

This call reaches us from many angles 
of need. To illustrate: Why are we dis- 
cussing so much in these days the problem 
of the rural church? Because in many 
sections of our country we find the rural 

16 



THE OPEN COUNTRY'S CALL 

field one of the most difficult mission fields 
of the world to cultivate because it is a 
lost home field. When one returns to his 
home country in the rural sections of 
the Eastern and Southern States and in 
some sections of the Middle West, what 
does he discover? He finds the splendid 
old circuit system broken up and the 
fires of religious fervor gone out upon 
many abandoned church and family altars; 
and the message of the minister in many 
instances is as ineffective to meet the exi- 
gencies of the situation as is the mummery 
of an Indian medicine man to cure a case 
of appendicitis. 

Why is this so? Because of population 
change through population movement, while 
there has been little, if any, change in 
methods of church work in these sections 
to meet the changing needs of these rural 
communities. I could illustrate by giving 
incidents gathered from surveys made in 
Maryland, Tennessee, Indiana, and Mis- 
souri, recently published, also from observa- 
tions made by social experts in New 
England and New Jersey, and the Southern 
coast and Gulf States. But I prefer to 
17 



THE RURAL CHURCH MOVEMENT 

give a few facts discovered in a casual 
way by an investigator while visiting a 
year or so ago a fairly prosperous farming 
section of one of our Eastern States: 

A farmer had committed suicide, isola- 
tion and lack of income and worrying 
over small debts he was then unable to 
pay being the causes. 

Another farmer in debt, his wife de- 
mented, and his farm advertised to be 
sold for taxes. 

A farmer's wife, with family of five — 
two grown sons, two grown daughters, 
and a little girl of eight; a hard-working 
husband with little initiative for new things; 
this woman bitter in soul, though patient 
and loyal, because at the age when burdens 
should have been lightened, she was com- 
pelled to drudge harder than ever with 
the cooking, housecleaning, washing, and 
dairy work. Oldest daughter teaching 
school and sending no part of her income 
to help lighten her mother's burden. 

Fifteen boys from twelve to twenty 
years of age playing craps in the light of 
a lantern on the porch of the village store 
and post office, while there was a vacant 

18 



THE OPEN COUNTRY'S CALL 

hall over the store not in use, though 
offered by the owner free to the public; 
and a church on the hill open only an 
hour or so on Sunday afternoon, when it 
didn't rain too hard. 

Another farmer's wife told a distressing 
story about her pastor: how he came to 
their home so intoxicated that he could 
with difficulty say grace at the table, 
and after supper went to bed, taking 
her husband's overcoat with him by mis- 
take, while in the pocket of his coat left 
in the hallway they discovered a flask 
of whisky. And she confessed they didn't 
know how to get rid of the minister, for 
there was no one willing to take the lead 
in informing the bishop. 

In the entire community this social 
expert found no organization or movement 
or association of any kind to help either 
of these distressing cases. Yet similar 
facts could be duplicated in many rural 
communities throughout the open country. 

What can we do about it? Show them 

a better way by developing among them 

leaders in community building. The open 

country's call is for leadership to meet 

19 



THE RURAL CHURCH MOVEMENT 

the needs which constitute the call for 
Christian men and women to invest life 
in these fields of social service. 

I have not time to emphasize the call 
from the viewpoint of the increasing death 
rate in rural life as compared with cities; 
the need for training in sanitation and 
hygiene and eugenics in rural life, as well 
as in city life. 

The Kind of Leadership Required 

It goes without argument that the leader- 
ship required in the open country must 
be essentially rural-minded. If we hope 
to socialize these isolated population groups 
in the country districts, it must be done 
by a native socialized leadership. In cer- 
tain cases, however, a young man or 
woman brought up in the city, if trained 
in rural economics and sociology, and 
possessing tact, will succeed in winning 
the confidence of the people of the country 
quite as well as one raised in the open 
country. What is essential is a proper 
training and a right spirit. We mean by 
a leader not merely the man who is ahead 
of those who are following, for that may 
20 



THE OPEN COUNTRY'S CALL 

be true and yet the group be getting 
nowhere, or may be headed for no definite 
goal, but we mean, rather, a man who 
has experience and vision so that he can 
see the needs of the people and show them 
a better way. He must be also a man of 
practical skill and untiring zeal stimulated 
by a constructive imagination and the 
dynamic sense of human worth; one who 
actually gets people to do something for 
their own betterment as well as for the 
uplift of the whole community. 

It is, of course, necessary to keep in 
mind the different vocations in which 
rural leadership is especially needed: as, 
for example, in the church, in the school, 
the rural Sunday school, the Young Men's 
Christian Association, and the Young 
Women's Christian Association, which is 
doing such splendid work of leadership 
among the girls and young women in the 
open country; also leadership in the Grange, 
farmers' clubs, agricultural leagues, farm 
bureaus, and all other forms of organized 
life now taking shape in the open country for 
the cooperative action of the whole com- 
munity for the welfare of the people as 
21 



THE RURAL CHURCH MOVEMENT 

a whole, as well as for the individual in 
special need. 

Young men and women who feel specially 
called to Christian service in the open 
country must be definitely trained in 
schools that have placed special emphasis 
upon rural science, or in colleges of agri- 
culture whose curricula have been broad- 
ened to include courses in rural sociology 
and religious social engineering, and they 
must be urged to volunteer for service 
in the rural field as in other fields of 
missionary enterprise. 

In case they go to the theological schools 
for graduate study, adequate provision 
must be made for courses that will train 
them for the country church as a lifework 
rather than away from the open country, 
as has been the case too often hitherto. 
The commission referred to above in the 
summary of its report has well said: 
"Most of the new leaders must be farmers 
who can find a satisfying business career 
on the farm, but who will throw them- 
selves into the service of upbuilding the 
community. A new race of teachers is 
also to appear in the country. A new 

22 



THE OPEN COUNTRY'S CALL 

rural clergy is to be trained. These leaders 
will see the great underlying problem of 
country life, and together they will work, 
each in his own field, for the one goal of 
a new and permanent rural civilization. . . . 
It is to be hoped that many young men 
and women, fresh from our schools and 
institutions of learning, and quick with 
ambition and trained intelligence, will feel 
a new and strong call to service." 1 

Factors that Make Such Leaders 

When we analyze the character of any 
great spiritual leader in the modern Rural 
Life movement, we find the factors that 
make him such a leader few and simple, 
and that they were evident in each stage 
of his development as a real leader. They 
may be stated and explained as follows: 

1. A Chance to Express the Adolescent 
Impulse to Achieve. I have in mind now 
a young man from one of the Southern 
States who is acknowledged to be a leader 
in modern rural life work who started 
his career at the age of sixteen by being 
given a chance to teach a Sunday school 

J See Report published by Sturgia & Walton Company, pp. 30, 31. 

23 



THE RURAL CHURCH MOVEMENT 

class in a country church where a ma- 
jority of the pupils were older than he; 
later he was given the superintendency of 
the Sunday school at the age of seven- 
teen; at the age of twenty-one he went 
to a preparatory school; at the age of 
twenty-eight he graduated from college. 
He would never have developed leadership 
in any good cause had he not been given 
a chance in early adolescence to do some- 
thing. Even at twelve he did a man's 
work, plowing his six rows of corn in 
turn like the rest. 

Functional psychology confirms this point 
of view with respect to leadership. As 
a matter of fact, our educational system 
hitherto in the rural schools, in the col- 
leges, and in the theological seminaries 
has educated men away from the rural 
field, not purposely but as a matter of 
mental adjustment. When we used to go 
on a " 'possum hunt" in my boyhood 
days, as I remember, the leader was 
always a young man who had been on a 
" 'possum hunt" before, and by actual 
experience knew how to lead. So for every 
department of organized endeavor of rural 

24 



THE OPEN COUNTRY'S CALL 

betterment to-day there must be given 
young men in the country a chance to 
express this adolescent impulse to achieve, 
and it must be given deliberately in every 
case, whether by Sunday school, church, 
Grange, farmers' club, or county Young 
Men's Christian Association. 

2. Ability to Sense and Perceive Human 
Needs. A second factor to be emphasized 
in this discussion is the ability to know 
the needs of the community in a sym- 
pathetic and intelligent way. 

A real leader in rural life can make a 
social survey of his community without 
even giving evidence to the observer that 
he is engaged in such a complex under- 
taking. He can readily see the lack of 
cooperation, the results of isolation and 
suspicious individualism, the product of 
generations of such isolation, or lack of 
community solidarity. He can readily see 
the economic basis of many of these 
human ills, and trace the social and spir- 
itual evils to their most important cause. 

He can not only sense the needs, but, 
if he be a leader, he will see through them 
to their causes, and thus be able to 
25 



THE RURAL CHURCH MOVEMENT 

intelligently direct to available resources 
for their treatment and cure. 

3. A Constructive Imagination. A real 
leader has also the power to construct 
a plan by which men can work toward 
achievement. He is able to build up 
a community structure in the minds of 
the people before they have actually 
achieved results. Take, for example, a 
successful country minister who has upon 
his study walls a map of his parish, with 
the problems and needs all charted — this 
man has taken the first constructive step 
in showing his people how they can get 
together. So must the leader in rural 
life to-day arouse the imagination of the 
farmer to see the relative greatness of 
our rural domain, and its tremendous 
significance as a resource field for the 
supply of the populous cities of the world. 
Thus will be given dignity to the toil 
of men and women in the open country. 

4. Engineering Skill in Avoiding Friction. 
Still another factor is that skill which 
enables a man to keep at work with various 
groups that, because of individualism and 
class consciousness, are often in conflict 

26 



THE OPEN COUNTRY'S CALL 

instead of cooperation. In other words, 
it is the skill to get team work. I remem- 
ber once, when a boy on the farm, seeing 
a great steam thresher drawn by four 
horses stuck in the mud on a hill, and 
I admired the skill with which another 
farmer hitched on his team and pulled 
the thresher out and up the hill by getting 
the eight span to pull steadily together 
without jerks, and without geeing and 
hawing. 

The rural leader should have the skill 
to unite for community work the church, 
the school, the Grange, and all other 
organizations when some great occasion de- 
mands that they all pull together for the 
benefit of the community. 

5. A Persistent Purpose to Win in a 
Good Cause. The last and not the least 
factor is persistent purpose. Leadership 
cannot really count unless it gets the 
people somewhere. I recall a little coun- 
try church near a village surrounded by 
a fairly prosperous farming district that 
had closed its doors for a year because 
of the lack of interest by the people in 
paying the salary of an inefficient pastor. 
27 



THE RURAL CHURCH MOVEMENT 

One young man, a farmer, and the village 
shoemaker got together and determined 
to hold a Sunday school in that church 
building even if only a dozen people 
could be persuaded to cooperate. And 
as a result of persistent effort and master- 
ful purpose, carried out for a period of 
two years, that whole community was 
revolutionized and nearly a hundred adults 
were converted and made members of 
the church. 

So with all forms of community leader- 
ship: to succeed there must be added to 
all the other requisite factors this in- 
domitable purpose to carry to successful 
issue the cause we have undertaken. 

The time to pull and push hardest is 
when the load is nearest the top of the 
hill. This is the supreme test of success- 
ful leadership, to get your team to pull 
the load over every "break" in the hill 
of human uplift. These, then, are the 
most important factors in the make-up 
of a real leader in the open country. 

How to develop such leadership is being 
solved to-day in a measure too little 
known to the public in general, by the 

28 



THE OPEN COUNTRY'S CALL 

colleges of agriculture, the theological sem- 
inaries, the County Work Department 
of the Young Men's Christian Association 
and, in some States, by the Department 
of Agriculture and the Department of 
Public Education. 

Some of the leading Sunday school 
publications contain departments of coun- 
try life; and home missions boards of the 
leading denominations are following the 
lead of the Presbyterian Board in organ- 
izing bureaus of country life as a part 
of home missionary enterprise. 

There is one other agency by which 
very quick results could be secured in the 
matter of discovery and training of such 
leadership, and that is through Bible study 
classes in the Christian Associations of 
our colleges and universities. There is a 
splendid chance in the scriptural back- 
ground for such a study. Take as one 
course "The Rural Training of the 
Prophets," and as another "The Rural- 
Mindedness of Jesus"; or still another 
mission study course in "The Conquest 
of the Germanic Races a Rural Achieve- 
ment"; or still another, "The Lutheran 
29 



THE RURAL CHURCH MOVEMENT 

Reformation in Relation to Country Life"; 
or "The Pioneer Period of Protestantism 
in America." Such subjects for Bible and 
mission study would give new zest to 
Association work in many of our schools, 
and at the same time would be perform- 
ing a useful service in developing leaders 
to answer the open country's call. 

Life Investment in the Open Country 

If ever we are to master the great cities 
for Jesus Christ, we must do it first by 
mastering the open country and the rural 
towns, whence flow the streams of popu- 
lation to the cities and back to the suburbs 
to form the basis for the greater cities. 
When Napoleon returned from Elba the 
country folk and the small towns rallied 
to his leadership, and when he reached 
the gates of Paris they had to open to 
him, for his following was invincible. I 
heard a distinguished Bishop say a few 
years ago, after a residence of some years 
in New York city, "If the churches ever 
hope to retain their religious fervor in 
the cities, they must take care of the 
country churches, for they feed the city 

30 



THE OPEN COUNTRY'S CALL 

churches with workers with religious 
fervor." 

The central parish plan to replace the 
old circuit system is opening unusual 
opportunities for Christian social service 
in which young men and women of our 
colleges should excel. Here will be cen- 
tered the consolidated school with its 
socialized curriculum, which will include 
the training of splendid moral, religious, 
and political leadership of the future. 
Also here will be centered the voluntary 
economic, social, and political associations 
of rural life. And from a study of the 
problems of organized charity among the 
poor mountain whites, the Negroes, and 
foreigners in the open country, here will 
be another fruitful field for life investment 
of consecrated Christian manhood and 
womanhood. 

The modern farmer has learned the 
necessity for bookkeeping and advertising. 
Here will be another opening for secre- 
tarial work for young men and women. 
And, unless I misinterpret the signs of 
the times, here also in the open country 
there will be an opportunity of grave 
31 



THE RURAL CHURCH MOVEMENT 

responsibility for leadership by college 
women when they have won the political 
battles for the use of the ballot. Too 
long have the best of the daughters of 
the open country heeded the call of the 
city, attracted by its lure, leaving mothers 
and younger sisters overburdened by their 
tasks; but in the dawn of a new day for 
the nation's good they are hearing in the 
college halls during decision days for life 
investment the still small voice of the 
Spirit calling to Christian service, and, 
for some of the best of them, it is the 
open country's call for leadership that 
will help make this land of ours a better 
place for all of us to live in. 



32 



CHAPTER II 

THE RURAL-MINDEDNESS OF THE 
PROPHETS AND OF JESUS 

All the great leaders in the Rural 
Life movement to-day are practically 
agreed that the country church is the 
most important factor in the adequate 
solution of the problem of the betterment 
of rural civilization. Theodore Roosevelt, 
Liberty H. Bailey, Kenyon L. Butterfield, 
Sir Horace Plunkett, Gifford Pinchot, and 
Albert E. Roberts, as well as many other 
writers and lecturers upon the subject, 
are all in accord on this point of emphasis 
in the modern rural situation. 

Other Social Movements with a Scrip- 
tural Background 

The social service movement had a 
scriptural background, as the writings of 
Benjamin Kidd, Francis Peabody, Walter 
Rauschenbusch, Shailer Mathews, Wash- 
ington Gladden, and many other writers 
will show at first reading. 
33 



THE RURAL CHURCH MOVEMENT 

The social settlement and city evan- 
gelization movements likewise made their 
appeal to the Scriptures in citing the 
example of Jesus "dwelling among us" 
in his ministry of personality, and also 
in pointing to the scriptural references to 
"the City of God," "the New Jerusalem," 
and other like references to the cities. 
As a result the whole missionary move- 
ment, for a generation or two, was directed 
to the cities rather than to the rural pop- 
ulations of the world's mission fields. 

It is therefore fitting that in the begin- 
ning of a work upon the Country Church 
movement of our times we should give 
it a scriptural basis, not that we hope 
to find the solution of our problems worked 
out for us there — which is an error to 
assume for the solution of any specific 
social or economic problem — but, rather, 
that we may discover the fact that we 
are dealing with a real dynamic problem 
of human history, and that we have 
scriptural sanction for the emphasis we 
are now placing upon the rural life prob- 
lem. 

Again, we do this deliberately for the 
34 



RURAL-MINDEDNESS 

reason that country folk are extremely 
conservative with reference to the sanction 
of any movement unless it has attached 
to it the value of scriptural sanction. 
Therefore if we can show a real basis 
in the Bible for the modern methods of 
rural improvement, we will the more easily 
win the consent of the country folk to 
our program, which is, after all, the nub 
of the whole Rural Life movement in so 
far as securing the cooperation of the 
country people is concerned. 

So rich are the materials for such a 
purpose, both in the Old Testament and 
in the New Testament, that it will be 
impossible in one chapter to do more 
than select a few references that will 
indicate the mine of material we have 
to work out for Bible study courses on 
the rural-mindedness of the writers of 
the Bible. We will, therefore, treat only 
three points under the general topic of 
the chapter: (1) The Rural Survey Out- 
lined by Moses; (2) The Rural Survey 
and Program of Jesus; (3) Illustrations 
of the Rural-Mindedness of the Prophets 
and of Jesus. 

35 



THE RURAL CHURCH MOVEMENT 

The Rural Survey Outlined by Moses 
(Num. 13. 17-20) 

In the first place we are to note the 
kind of men chosen to conduct the survey: 
"And Jehovah spake unto Moses, saying, 
Send thou men, that they may spy out 
the land of Canaan, which I give unto 
the children of Israel: of every tribe of 
their fathers shall ye send a man, every 
one a prince among them" (verses 1, 2). 
We notice that he selected men, one from 
each group (tribe), and every man was to 
be a prince among his fellows. 

The church of to-day will not win back 
its lost rural domain, nor win new fields 
of rural conquest, by sending to this 
field, as is too frequently the case, super- 
annuated preachers, unprepared novices, or 
flunkers in preparatory schools or theolog- 
ical seminaries, or those who couldn't 
hold a city appointment. It will win 
only when it places in this field men who 
know and love the open country, and 
every man a prince among his fellows — 
the choice men who know their problem 
and delight in hard work. 

36 



RURAL-MINDEDNESS 

In the second place we consider the 
character of the survey plan (verses 17-20). 
In order that the reader may the more 
readily get a graphic view of this survey 
plan I will italicize the words to be em- 
phasized in the verses quoted: "And Moses 
sent them to spy out [survey] the land 
of Canaan, and said unto them, Get you 
up this way by the South, and go up into 
the hill-country: and see the land, what it 
is; and the people that dwell therein, 
whether they are strong or weak, whether 
they are few or many; and what the land 
is that they dwell in, whether it is good 
or bad; and what cities they are that they 
dwell in, whether in camps, or in strong- 
holds; and what the land [soil] is, whether 
it is fat or lean, whether there is wood 
therein, or not. And be ye of good courage, 
and bring of the fruit of the land. Now the 
time was the time of the first-ripe grapes." 

This may not be a model for a modern 
rural social survey, but from the view- 
point of mastery of a situation that re- 
quires militant methods it has points of 
suggestion as to plan that ought not to 
be left out of any modern program for 
37 



THE RURAL CHURCH MOVEMENT 

the mastery of the problems of rural 
regions. 

Notice in detail the nine points in 
this survey: 

(1) They were to begin at the low 
lands of the south and proceed to the 
hill-country of the north — a general sur- 
vey of the land, a study of the topography 
of the country. 

(2) They were to make a careful study 
of the people, whether strong or weak, 
few or many — a general census, and a 
study in demography. 

(3) They were to study the economic 
and moral values of the country — whether 
good or bad. 

(4) They were to place special emphasis 
upon the character of the dwelling places 
of the people — whether in cities, in camps, 
or in walled towns; whether they were a 
commercial, nomadic, or military people. 

(5) They were to make a study of the 
soil and its products — a geological, biolog- 
ical, and botanical survey; a study of 
the vegetation, forests, fruits, etc. 

(6) They were to be courageous in seek- 
ing and securing all the facts. 

38 



RURAL-MINDEDNESS 

(7) They were to bring back the goods, 
to show that they had been there. 

(8) They were to make the survey dur- 
ing the best season — "the time of the 
first-ripe grapes." 

(9) They were to conduct the survey 
within a definite period of time — forty days. 

We can see that from the military, 
exploiter, point of view there is little we 
could add to make such a survey plan 
complete for modern times. 

The Rural Survey and Program 

of Jesus 

(Matt. 9. 35-88; 10. 1, 5-10, 16, 28; 11. 1, 

20-21*, 28-30) 

These Scripture references give us the 
basis for the modern rural social survey 
from the viewpoint of the Christian group 
which seeks to serve the rural community. 
The man who makes a survey of a com- 
munity with this great Christian motive 
of service for the people will see vastly 
more than the man who seeks only an 
opportunity to exploit the resources, nat- 
ural and human, of the region he surveys. 

In studying this survey plan of Jesus 
39 



THE RURAL CHURCH MOVEMENT 

we notice that it has a progressive move- 
ment. It began with work, (Jesus went 
about all the cities — rural towns — and vil- 
lages teaching, preaching, healing.) It 
developed vision. (He saw the multitudes 
distressed and scattered.) It moved the 
will. (He was moved with compassion 
for them; he prayed for laborers.) It 
resulted in a program. (He called unto 
him his twelve disciples, gave them author- 
ity, instructed them, and sent them forth.) 
In modern days it is the man who starts 
out to work the fields of need that dis- 
covers the facts and develops a program 
that reaches results. 

In the next place we notice that this 
program of Jesus included specific instruc- 
tions for rural leaders: (1) They were 
not to scatter nor dissipate their energies, 
but were to work their specific field. 
("Go not into any way of the Gentiles, 
and enter not into any city of the Samar- 
itans.") They were to serve those who 
needed them most — they were to seek the 
lost sheep of the house of Israel. (2) They 
were to get their support from the field 
where they worked on the basis of services 

40 



RURAL-MINDEDNESS 

rendered. ("The laborer is worthy of his 
food.") (3) They were instructed to seek 
out first the worthy members of the com- 
munity in presenting their message of the 
Kingdom. (4) They were told to be men 
of personal equipment in character — men 
of wisdom, gentleness, and courage ("wise 
as serpents, and harmless as doves" — 
fearing only him who could put a mort- 
gage on their souls). 

Again we notice that the method of 
Jesus was to deal with fundamental facts: 

1. He places condemnation upon the 
system that was causal to the distress he 
discovered. The rural districts of Palestine 
were the victims of the commercialism 
and militarism of the cities of Chorazin, 
Bethsaida, and Capernaum. He pro- 
nounced his woes upon the exploiters and 
not upon the victims. He discriminated 
between cause and effect. The taxgatherers, 
the merchants, the lawyers, and the soldiers 
all came in for their condemnation. 

2. He had comfort for the victims. He 
placed emphasis upon the dignity of toil. 
("Come unto me, all ye that labor and 
are heavy laden.") He proposed better 

41 



THE RURAL CHURCH MOVEMENT 

methods of doing work — not rest from 
labor, but rest in labor. ("Take my yoke 
upon you, and learn of me.") He taught 
the greater lesson of soul rest as the su- 
preme need of the worker. This is espe- 
cially true of many rural folk to-day. 

Such a program for a rural social survey 
from the viewpoint of service to the entire 
community can scarcely be improved upon 
to-day, from the viewpoint of emphasis 
upon fundamentals. 

Illustrations of the Rural-Minded- 
ness of the Prophets and of Jesus 

It would take a concordance of some 
size to record all the rural references in 
the Old and New Testaments, from the 
second chapter of Genesis, where it is 
recorded Jehovah God planted a garden 
eastward, in Eden, and out of the ground 
made Jehovah God to grow every tree 
that is pleasant to the sight and good 
for food (verses 8, 9), to the twenty-second 
chapter of Revelation, where the writer 
in vision saw in the midst of the Holy 
City a river of life on either side of which 
was the tree of life bearing twelve manner 

42 



RURAL-MINDEDNESS 

of fruits yielding its fruit every month 
(verses 1, 2). We will give therefore 
space for only a few typical illustrations 
from the Old Testament prophets, and 
a few of the many sayings of Jesus in the 
New Testament whereby he illustrated his 
teachings from the facts of rural life. 

The Rural-Mindedness of the Prophets 

1. In the book of Numbers (22. 21-35) 
we have the story of Balaam's ride across 
country to meet Balak, king of the Moab- 
ites, who describes the children of Israel 
as devouring his land as an ox licketh up 
the grass of the field (verse 4), a fact of 
rhetoric that every schoolboy in the coun- 
try could readily understand because he 
knows the dental make-up of the ox's 
mouth. 

One needs but little imagination, in 
reading this story, to see the ass with 
his rider shying at the apparition in the 
road, and taking to the plowed field, or 
crushing the foot of his rider against 
the wall or gatepost, or balking and re- 
fusing to go through a narrow pass. 

2. In Isa. 1. 3 we note the acquaintance- 

43 



THE RURAL CHURCH MOVEMENT 

ship the prophet had with the character 
of domestic animals. In 5. 1, 2 the vine- 
yard is described. "Land hunger," one 
of the evils of rural life pointed out by 
the Country Life Commission, where the 
avaricious landowner adds farm to farm 
and never thinks of improving the living 
conditions of his wife and family, or of 
his hired men, is illustrated in 5. 8. 

Domestic animals and their enemies are 
described in 11. 6-9. Warfare one must 
wage in husbandry is pointed out in 
27. 2-6. The value to a nation of peace- 
ful agriculture we find in 32. 20. The 
blessings of rains in rural regions, and of 
good roads, are illustrated in chapters 
thirty-five and forty. 

Chapter fifty-three, that masterpiece of 
Messianic significance, is rich in rural 
imagery. Chapter fifty-five starts with an 
inventory of the resources of the land to 
meet human needs and ends with a lesson 
in forestry, while in chapter sixty-four the 
destructiveness of the forest fire is por- 
trayed, and the brickyard and the pottery 
are mentioned. 

3. Jeremiah, though essentially a prophet 
44 



RURAL-MINDEDNESS 

of the city, borrows much of his imagery 
from country life. His first vision is of 
the rod of an almond tree (1. 11). 

4. Ezekiel mentions many varieties of 
farm and garden vegetables in 4. 9; 
the trees and the vine in chapter fifteen; 
hunting big game in 9. 1-9, and the need 
of caution against forest fires in 20. 45-49. 

5. The book of Daniel furnishes a splen- 
did study of how a country boy became 
a great leader in religion and in govern- 
ment in chapters one and two. 

6. Joel, in 1. 8-12, expresses many rural 
ideas, and in 3. 10 he gives us the reversal 
of that famous text so often quoted from 
Micah 4. 3 with reference to the ideal age. 
Instead we have the significant statement 
that they shall beat their "plowshares into 
swords, and their pruninghooks into spears." 
One is reminded here of how the "up- 
state" farmers come to the rescue of our 
reform movements when a great moral 
issue is up in politics. 

7. Amos, in 3. 1-8, takes us back to 
our boyhood days when we set snares 
and hunted wild game. 

8. Even in Jonah, in 4. 6, the gourd 

45 



THE RURAL CHURCH MOVEMENT 

has as much pedagogical value as the 
incident of the whale. 

9. The poetical and historical books, 
and the Wisdom literature as well, equally 
abound in references to rural life. The 
twenty-third psalm is a classic in rural 
imagery. 

The Rural-Mindedness of Jesus 

Apart from the rural survey and pro- 
gram of Jesus given above, we give space 
for only a few illustrations of the rural- 
mindedness of Jesus expressed by the 
writers of the Gospels. Born in a Judsean 
hill town in a stable, and brought up in 
Nazareth in the open country of Galilee, 
it is not difficult to see how he came to 
use so much illustrative material in his 
preaching from the scenes and struggles of 
the common folk in the open country. 

1. The parable of the sower (Matt. 13. 
1-9) and its interpretation (verses 18-23) 
furnish a splendid text for a study of 
soils and of preparation of the ground 
for seeding, and for a study of the natural 
and destructive forces with which the 
farmer has to contend. It gives also an 

46 



RURAL-MINDEDNESS 

impetus to intensive farming to reach 
the maximum yield. 

The parable of the tares and the wheat 
in the same chapter (verses 24-30), and 
its interpretation in verses 36-43, give an 
interesting background for the study of 
social friction and local feuds in rural 
life, for in the open country, as in Ken- 
tucky, they are often the most bitter 
and long-lived. It gives also the basis 
for a philosophic answer to the vexing 
problem of good and evil in the world, 
which so often perplexes the people of 
the country as well as those in the cities. 

2. Mark gives us additional material in 
the parables of the seed and the Kingdom. 
In 4. 26-29 he gives a lesson of the natural- 
ness of the growth of the kingdom of 
God on earth as a grain of mustard seed. 

3. Luke gives us in 12. 13-21 that 
wonderful description of the fool farmer 
who filled his belly and his barns and 
then died with a shriveled soul. He gives 
us the story of the lost sheep and the 
shepherd's anxious hunt throughout the 
night, and of his tender care in bringing 
it warm in his bosom to the sheepfold 

47 



THE RURAL CHURCH MOVEMENT 

again. He tells us the story of the younger 
brother who went wrong and repented and 
returned home to find his father's for- 
giveness and favor. 

These two stories in the fifteenth chap- 
ter of Luke have furnished the spiritual 
dynamic of many a country revival that 
has brought back to a clean life the prod- 
igal son of many a rural homestead. 

In closing this brief outline of the rural 
background of the Bible I would like 
to suggest that the Christian Associations 
in all our colleges, universities, and theo- 
logical seminaries would do well in starting 
courses in Bible study based upon the 
facts of the rural consciousness of the 
writers of the Old and the New Testaments. 



48 



CHAPTER III 

THE SPIRITUAL CONQUEST OF 

THE GERMANIC PEOPLES A 

RURAL ACHIEVEMENT 

In one brief lecture covering so vast 
a period of history as twelve long cen- 
turies, the time it took for the spiritual 
conquest of the Germanic peoples, it will 
be impossible to do more than mention 
those outstanding facts in this world 
achievement that will in some way con- 
tribute to our problem of the modern 
country church, and the methods by which 
we hope to reach its solution. 

The Germanic peoples were of a sturdy 
race of nature-worshiping nomads, who 
lived in the open country or in the thickly 
wooded forests of the mountains and the 
river valleys of the Rhine, the Elba, the 
Wieser, and the Danube. Though driven 
later by military expediency to live in 
"Stadte und Dorfer" — cities and villages — 
yet until after the war with France in 
1870-1871 they were essentially a rural, 
49 



THE RURAL CHURCH MOVEMENT 

agrarian folk. At that time seventy-five 
per cent of the population were reckoned 
as rural, while to-day the reverse is true 
owing to the marvelous industrial develop- 
ment of Germany during the last quarter 
of the nineteenth century. 

There are three periods in this rural 
achievement that we will consider: (1) The 
Pre-Reformation Period; (2) The Lutheran 
Reformation; (3) The Modern Rural Move- 
ment in Germany. We shall treat only 
of the outstanding facts of these three 
periods and apply them to our rural 
problem. 

The Pre-Reformation Period 

The great outstanding fact of this period 
from the fourth to the sixteenth century 
was the planting of martyrs in German soil. 
In fact, the soil seems to have become 
inoculated with the germs of martyrdom, 
for in the period directly following, during 
the Peasants' War, over one hundred 
thousand country folk were put to the 
sword, even with the sanction of the 
Protestant reformers. Indeed, "the seed 
of the church" were planted so thick in 

50 



A RURAL ACHIEVEMENT 

some localities that a country preacher of 
those times couldn't dig for the founda- 
tion of a church without turning up the 
bones of the martyrs. I remember having 
seen in one of the treasure rooms of the 
Cologne Cathedral one case of skulls that 
was said to contain the unearthed remains 
of two thousand Christian virgins martyred 
at one time by some heathen worshiper 
of Woden. 

The missionaries of this early period 
were mostly of Frankish, Scotch, Anglo- 
Saxon stock. Rupert in Bavaria, Winfrid 
(Boniface), the apostle to the Germans, 
and Charlemagne are the outstanding lead- 
ers of this period. Methodius and Cyrill 
converted the Moravians the middle of 
the ninth century. All of these leaders 
were men who had a passion for the uplift 
of the people to whom they ministered. 
They were men trained in the monasteries 
— the theological schools of their times. 
The country church to-day needs men 
and methods of a similar character. 

1. We need to plant some martyrs in 
the country districts. I mean by martyrs 
men who are willing to be of no reputa- 
51 



THE RURAL CHURCH MOVEMENT 

tion, to live on meager fare, and work 
hard to build up a spiritual domain in 
the rural communities to which they have 
been sent of God. 

2. The Rural Church movement will 
for a long time to come be compelled to 
adopt a missionary plan of administration: 
(1) in seeking for volunteers to undertake 
the task; (2) in training such men by 
special courses in rural sociology and 
economics, as well as in agricultural science 
as a background and foundation for a 
spiritual ministry in rural communities; 
(3) in its financial policy of support of its 
rural work, for in many of the most needy 
communities it will be impossible for the 
right man to secure his living entirely 
in the community where he does his 
work — especially the matter of providing 
proper equipment and helpers for any 
adequate work. 

3. We will have to depend upon leaders 
outside and train them in theological sem- 
inaries for the task. One of the most 
successful rural pastors I know is a young 
man brought up in the city and educated 
in college and seminary, who studied the 

52 



A RURAL ACHIEVEMENT 

problem of country life and volunteered 
to take a rural parish as his lifework. 
It is true that he has had no easy row 
to hoe, but he is winning out by a policy 
that puts the community and the kingdom 
of God ahead of the interests of any hide- 
bound, close-fisted trustee of his church, 
who, like his New Testament prototype, 
thinks more of his sumptuous board and 
his bulging barns than he does of the 
church and the community. He has a 
following of the young men growing up 
in the community who begin to see the 
real significance of the problem of rural 
civilization and the part the church is 
to play in its development. These will 
carry on his work, no matter what may 
become of the minister in the exigencies 
of the vote of a temporary majority of 
the stand-patters who talk progress while 
they amble like a crab in reverse order 
to the way they seem to be headed, or 
like a razor-backed swine you want to 
drive into a new pasture. 

4. There is a notion among some modern 
workers and writers on the Rural Life 
movement that country folk resent having 
53 



THE RURAL CHURCH MOVEMENT 

a minister who is not rural born and 
bred. I find, as a matter of fact, that 
this is not true. It depends upon the man 
as to whether he knows, and can teach 
others, no matter where he had his birth 
or preparation. A Methodist minister in 
the country in Ohio who had retired from 
the active ministry was sent to a country 
charge by the district superintendent to 
fill out the year, there being available no 
other supply. Though living in the city, 
he adapted himself to his people of the 
open country in such a masterful way 
that he has been compelled by them to 
remain four years as their pastor. I met 
him some time ago at the commencement 
of his alma mater and found that he was 
a master in nature study, and does expert 
work for the State and national biological 
surveys. This is in part what he wrote 
me some time ago in response to a re- 
quest for information on his methods of 
interesting the farmers in church work: 

"In addition to the blue litmus paper 
test of the soil for acidity and examination 
of fruit trees for scale and other insects, 
one can also suggest to farmers and gar- 

54 



A RURAL ACHIEVEMENT 

deners how to fertilize the soil by growing 
nitrogen-catching crops and by applying 
commercial nitrogen, phosphate or potash, 
according to the needs of the particular 
plot. Much money is wasted in buying 
fertilizers that are not needed at all. Also 
how to prune trees for growth or for 
fruit; how to feed and care for poultry 
and all sorts of livestock, and a thousand 
other topics relating to rural life are of 
great interest to many people and afford 
topics for conversation of mutual interest 
and a point of contact with many a man 
who is utterly indifferent in regard to 
church matters until his friendship and 
favor is first secured through some other 
avenue of approach. But people will want 
to know how a religious worker is to get 
the necessary information. Public libraries 
usually contain books and magazines on 
horticulture, gardening, fertilization, in- 
sects, birds, live stock, etc., that the 
average rural resident does not possess 
and has probably never heard of. One 
can write to the Department of Agri- 
culture, Washington, D. C, and get a 
list of all their bulletins for free distribu- 
55 



THE RURAL CHURCH MOVEMENT 

tion and those for sale. The latter can be 
secured free by ordering through a member 
of Congress. From the lists one can select 
what is desired. Also from the State 
Departments of Agriculture and experiment 
stations free bulletins are sent on applica- 
tion. It may be well to read an agri- 
cultural paper, such as The Rural New 
Yorker, or The Country Gentleman, or 
one of the many others that could be 
named. Most of them cost one dollar 
a year, and some of them less." 

The Lutheran Reformation 

During this period of the spiritual con- 
quest of the Germanic peoples we discern 
three outstanding facts: (1) Leadership of 
native German stock, clerical and political; 

(2) emphasis upon popular education; and 

(3) rural church organization, 

Luther was in the truest sense an "echt 
Deutscher," a true German. Melanchthon 
and Lambert were also trained for leader- 
ship in association with Luther on German 
soil. Under such leadership, with the 
support of the temporal princes and rulers 
of the evangelical provinces, Saxony, 

56 



A RURAL ACHIEVEMENT 

Hesse, Franconia, Luneburg, East Fries- 
land, Schleswig and Holstein, Silesia, 
Prussia, and a number of cities of lower 
Germany were organized upon a permanent 
basis of evangelical doctrine and liberal 
education. The revelations of the peasant 
war, in which one hundred thousand per- 
ished, opened the eyes of these leaders 
to the necessity of any permanent reform 
movement being organized and intelligent. 

So, for the modern Rural Church move- 
ment, we must lay emphasis at this stage 
of the movement, upon (1) the character 
of its leadership, (2) the policy of its 
education, and (3) the form of its organ- 
ization. 

1. Leadership. We must secure two 
classes of leaders in the modern rural 
church — the native-born-and-bred minister, 
and the patriotic, freedom-loving layman 
who loves the open country, its people, 
and the religion of Jesus Christ. There 
must be developed, as in Germany during 
the Reformation period, the closest sym- 
pathy and cooperation between the two 
classes of leaders. Our colleges and sem- 
inaries should train them. The present 
57 



THE RURAL CHURCH MOVEMENT 

demand for rural leadership should bring 
them to the front. The church and the 
Christian Associations should discover and 
employ them in the reorganization of the 
rural church and in the development of 
a new rural civilization. 

2. Education, We are just beginning to 
reorganize our system of rural education, 
but it is only a beginning. The task is 
one that will take a generation to com- 
plete, because under our modern system 
of local authority in education the powers 
that control are incapable of very radical 
changes, hence the process will be slow. 
But that should spur the church and civic 
leaders to even greater efforts in the work 
of extending popular ideas of rural educa- 
tion through conventions, conferences, and 
short courses in summer and winter schools. 

3. Organization. Luther, Melanchthon, 
and Lambert organized the German re- 
formed churches to meet the needs of 
their times. So must the modern country 
church be organized on lines that will 
meet the modern demands and needs of 
our rural population. (1) It must be 
organized on the plan of a more effective 

58 



A RURAL ACHIEVEMENT 

ministry — men adequate to meet the needs 
of country folk. (2) It must be organ- 
ized on the basis of a modified theology 
and church polity — emphasis upon function 
rather than form, the sanction of normal 
processes of growth and the prevention of 
abnormal and destructive ideas due to 
native and traditional ignorance. (3) It 
must be organized to take care of the 
recreational life of the young people of 
the country. Something must be done 
to make country life more attractive to 
counteract the lure of the city and the 
unguided wanderlust of the rural prod- 
igal son. 

The Modern Rural Movement 
in Germany 

Modern Germany has suffered in its 
religious development from oversensitive- 
ness of the ruling class against voluntary 
organizations of the people. Fortunately, 
in later years the Young Men's Christian 
Association has done much to soothe this 
sensitiveness, and the presence of evan- 
gelistic denominations like the Baptists 
and Methodists has put a new spirit of 

59 



THE RURAL CHURCH MOVEMENT 

evangelism in the established churches. 
The Raiffeissen Banking System for rural 
communities, based upon the character and 
good will of the people, has done much 
toward the improvement of rural con- 
ditions; and, besides, the agrarian interests 
in the Parliaments of the German states 
keep the rural problem well to the fore 
in the mind of the nation. I have no 
doubt that the printed report of the 
Commission on Cooperative Agencies in 
Rural Life in Europe will add greatly to 
our information concerning the present 
status of the rural church in Germany, 
and contribute something of value to the 
solution of our rural problem in America.* 



60 



CHAPTER IV 

THE RURAL CHURCH AND THE 
PIONEER PERIOD IN AMERICA 

It is not our purpose in this chapter to 
go into details concerning the men and 
their experiences during this interesting 
period of church history in America — 
these may be secured from any good 
volume on the pioneer period of American 
history — but our purpose is, rather, to 
point out those distinctive features of 
the rural church of that period, and to 
deduce from them some suggestions that 
may help us in solving the problem of the 
rural church in our day. 

It must be understood at the outset 
that the pioneer rural church is still at 
work in our time in the Northwest regions 
and in the Southwest under the leadership 
of the sky pilots of the lumber camps and 
the stump areas of the new agricultural 
regions of Minnesota, Montana, Washing- 
ton, and Oregon, and the newly reclaimed 
areas of arid land through irrigation under 
61 



THE RURAL CHURCH MOVEMENT 

federal control. But the period we have 
more distinctly in mind is that which 
followed the close of the Revolutionary 
War, from 1800 to about 1830 or 1840, dur- 
ing which time vast areas of the Mississippi 
basin, on its eastern slope especially, were 
settled by the pioneer, when the rural 
church was the greatest factor in the 
molding of an enduring democracy through 
the union of these new population groups 
which built up the great States of the 
Middle West. We therefore wish to speak 
of (1) The Character of the Pioneer Period, 
(2) The Character and Function of the 
Pioneer Preacher and the Pioneer Church, 
and (3) to make some applications to 
present needs in rural church conditions. 

The Character of the Pioneer Period 

It was a period of warfare with primitive 
opposing elements. The whole Western 
area of this continent was practically an 
untamed wilderness. The primitive ele- 
ments of opposition were (1) the hostile 
tribes of Indians, who for vast periods 
of time had been in undisputed possession 
of the virgin forests and prairies and 



THE PIONEER PERIOD 

streams and valleys with all their wealth 
of nature's resources, (2) the primitive soil 
with its forests and shrubbery and grasses 
— barriers to then known methods of 
agriculture. Against these the pioneer 
must battle often single-handed with ax 
and grubbing hoe, and improvised plow- 
share, with nerve-wrecking ox team, spav- 
ined horse, or balky mule; (3) wild beasts 
■ — the panther, the wild cat, the wolf, the 
bear, the bison; and the rattlesnake, viper, 
and other poisonous reptiles; (4) primitive 
instincts of selfishness due to isolation, 
and a natural suspicion of the adventurer 
as a criminal or fugitive from justice; 
(5) superstition, "fire water," and the devil. 
All of these opposing forces made the 
task of the pioneer preacher one of war- 
fare also, and aroused in him the martial 
spirit of the Crusader and the martyr 
spirit of the primitive apostles of Chris- 
tianity to the heathen world. 

The Character and Function of the 

Pioneer Preacher and the 

Pioneer Church 

In the first place, he was a man who 
63 



THE RURAL CHURCH MOVEMENT 

had a natural instinct for leadership. He 
knew what to do in any given situation, 
and won by the force of his character 
against the odds of his primitive environ- 
ment. Peter Cartwright is a type of the 
early period; Higgins, the sky pilot of 
the lumber camps of the Northwest, is a 
type of the modern period. One of our 
bishops tells of a preacher in Montana 
who went into a pioneer town of that State 
ten years ago, and was compelled in self- 
defense to thrash a group of toughs on 
the street the first day, and in so doing 
won their respect to the extent that he 
has been twice elected mayor of the town. 
Secondly, they were men who believed 
in their calling and in their country. 
They had the conviction of Elijah, John 
the Baptist, the apostle Peter, and John 
Knox pretty well mixed in their entire 
make-up; and they preached with such 
earnestness that men were compelled to 
believe in their gospel; and they were 
such patriots that they led whole States 
to trust in the Union and in the authority 
of the federal government. They laid 
the foundations in Christian character that 

64 



THE PIONEER PERIOD 

made possible the preservation of the 
Union, and loyalty to the flag in that 
great struggle that tested the work of 
the builders of our constitution, and made 
it possible in our day for us to see the 
veterans on both sides in that struggle 
in fraternal exchanges of war experiences 
review together, after fifty years, the 
bloodiest battlefield of human history — 
Gettysburg. 

Again, we find that the country church 
of this period, whether held in a log 
"meetinghouse" or in a log schoolhouse, 
furnished a place of meeting on a democratic 
basis of social equality for the settlers of 
these wilderness regions; and the pioneer 
itinerant preacher was the socializing agency 
for the social, political, and intellectual 
solidarity of isolated groups. They were 
the only people who traveled and learned 
what was going on in the world. They 
became the sources of information on sub- 
jects of political, social, and economic, as 
well as scientific and educational value. 

The Conference held annually by denom- 
inations such as the Methodists brought 
together men from various parts of the 
65 



THE RURAL CHURCH MOVEMENT 

newly settled districts, and gave an oppor- 
tunity for the exchange of valuable and 
important information concerning public as 
well as religious affairs. In fact, the 
country church and the pioneer preacher 
formed the social medium through which, 
by interstimulation and response, the whole 
organization of society of that day was 
built up. Or, to use another figure, the 
churches formed the warp and the traveling 
preacher produced the woof, which together 
made into one closely woven fabric the 
growing Territories into States, and the 
States into a homogeneous federal govern- 
ment. 

Application of Pioneer Principles to 
Present Needs 

The country church of that period 
selected methods and men to suit the 
needs of that time. The Country Church 
movement to-day will succeed when it 
adopts this policy. Then the preacher was 
a moving tie; to-day he must be the cen- 
tral cell of a new social nucleus. The 
circuit system in most rural communities 
has ceased to be effective as it was then. 

66 



THE PIONEER PERIOD 

The "meetinghouse" (may we preserve the 
idea, if not the name!) is still essential; 
but it must be more than a meeting place 
— it must become a center for the organ- 
ized expression of the whole community life. 

The circuit rider was an heroic and 
necessary social agent then; he is so no 
longer. To-day we need a new heroic 
type of country preacher who will have 
the courage to stay camped in one com- 
munity until by religious instruction and 
social service he has, like John Frederick 
Oberlin, built up in one whole sweep of 
country a new rural civilization in which 
the character of Christ is the badge of 
citizenship. 

It is rather significant and confirmatory 
of this proposal that the recent rural 
survey published under the name of 
Mr. Pinchot and Mr. Gill shows that in 
the territory surveyed the denomination 
which emphasizes the parish plan is grow- 
ing more rapidly in rural districts than 
any other denomination; while our studies 
of the pioneer period show that the same 
denomination was the slowest to increase 
in the frontier territory, while the itinerant, 

67 



THE RURAL CHURCH MOVEMENT 

circuit-forming Methodists increased the 
fastest. 

The Basis of Appeal 

We must produce by actual portrayal 
of the facts a moral equivalent of the war 
spirit of the pioneer period. The facts of 
the rural social survey when properly pre- 
sented will furnish the basis for such an ap- 
peal as will enlist a new type of men for the 
task of redeeming our lost rural domain for 
the kingdom of God. Such a survey, to be 
successful, must do two things: (1) It must 
make such an inventory of all rural re- 
sources for human betterment, make such 
a classification of the normal wealth and 
life-producing forces in soil, climate, water 
power, and animal and human husbandry, 
that any man with normal powers of mind 
can appreciate the possibilities for human 
betterment in our vast rural domain. 
(2) It must also take into account all the 
opposing forces to human health and happi- 
ness in rural life, and portray in good 
red colors all the rural devils that contend 
with those who seek to better the con- 
ditions of those who are in need of a richer 
social gospel. 

68 



THE PIONEER PERIOD 

When this has been done, when the 
church and the Christian Associations and 
other voluntary associations for the better- 
ment of the rural conditions make their 
appeal for men to volunteer for the task 
from the universities, the colleges of agri- 
culture, and from the ranks of men in 
the field who have seen service in the 
cities, and have kept in touch with the 
rural situation, will come the answer, 
"Here am I; send me." 

The Church Harmonized with Known 
Conditions 

The character and function of the rural 
church and the rural minister must be made 
to harmonize with the actual conditions dis- 
covered. The church building and organi- 
zation must be constructed and formulated 
on a community basis, with a social sym- 
pathy that includes the cities and the larger 
interests of the nation as a whole. It 
would be a great mistake to develop the 
country at the expense of the city and the 
nation. It would be just as bad for the 
rural life movement to become class con- 
scious and fleece Wall Street as it would 

69 



THE RURAL CHURCH MOVEMENT 

be for Wall Street and the middlemen of 
the cities to fleece the country lambs in 
the economic struggle. 

The country minister must still be a 
socializing agent. He must have oppor- 
tunity for conventions, and must travel 
and hold conference with other social groups 
than his own territory, so that, as in the 
days of the pioneer preacher, he may be 
a real bond for the social solidarity of 
the nation as a whole. He should not 
confine his studies to theology, but should 
broaden the range of his human regard 
so as to take into the sweep of his min- 
istry even the simple-minded folk of a 
rural hamlet and give to them the ideas 
that are fundamental to the establishment 
of the kingdom of God in actual govern- 
ment in this world wherein abideth right- 
eousness and peace and spiritual joy in 
actual achievement of the tasks Jesus 
Christ gave us to perform. 



70 



CHAPTER V 

THE PERIOD OF RURAL CHURCH 
DECLINE 

In any case of social change there can 
be no definite time or line of demarkation 
discovered as to when such an epoch really 
began or closed, because the processes of 
social evolution are constant in their work- 
ing, and the laws of growth and decay are 
unceasing in their operation. But we can 
approximate the period when any organic 
living thing has its greatest growth, its 
cycle of greatest fruition, and the period 
of decline and decay. So with the country 
church in America. Its greatest growth 
was during the pioneer period from 1780 
to 1830 to 1840. The time of its greatest 
fruition as a factor in molding the re- 
ligious, moral, and political life as well 
as the educational life of the nation was 
from the forties to the seventies. The 
period of decline may be worked out 
roughly as the last quarter of the nine- 
teenth century, or from 1870 to 1900, or 

71 



THE RURAL CHURCH MOVEMENT 

from 1880 to 1905, at the close of which 
period the country church as a factor in 
the Rural Life movement was pointed out 
by men like Dr. Wilbert L. Anderson, the 
author of The Country Town, and Pres- 
ident W. DeWitt Hyde, on The Impend- 
ing Paganism of New England, and later 
by the epoch-making report of the Roosevelt 
Commission on Country Life, headed by 
that master prophet of the new rural 
civilization, Director Liberty H. Bailey, 
of New York State College of Agriculture 
at Cornell University. 

We shall best find the kernel of this 
period by (1) stating certain typical facts 
of the church's decline, (2) by stating the 
chief causes of this decline, and (3) by 
making from these facts certain deductions 
as to what we can best do to reclaim 
the church's lost domain in the open 
country. 

Typical Facts of the Church's Decline 

Surveys in various parts of the country 
— the West, the South, the East, the 
Central, and the New England States — 
made by church boards of home missions 

72 



RURAL CHURCH DECLINE 

all confirm the fact of rural decay. (See 
those published by the Presbyterian Board 
of Home Missions — Country Church De- 
partment.) One recently made by the 
Newark District Church Society of the 
Newark Conference in the rural sections 
of that district shows similar results. Also 
a very interesting survey made by Mr. 
Shapleigh in Morris County, New Jersey, 
under the direction of the County Work 
Department of the Young Men's Chris- 
tian Association, shows similar facts of 
decline. 

The most recent and typical of this 
period, because based upon scientific meth- 
ods covering a period of twenty years, is 
that recently published over the names 
of C. O. Gill and the Hon. Gifford Pinchot. 
This survey gives us some interesting 
facts as to the decline of the country church 
in two counties of two of the original 
States of the Union, New York and 
Vermont. Under "Summary of Results" 
(p. llff.) the following facts are interesting 
to study: 

1. "They show that in these counties 
the country church has suffered a decline 

73 



THE RURAL CHURCH MOVEMENT 

which proves beyond question that it is 
losing its hold upon the community" (p. 11). 

2. "Church membership in Windsor 
County increased in twenty years 4 per 
cent and in Tompkins County 2 per cent" 
(p. 13). These statistics of increase of 
membership lose some of their significance 
as to actual conditions of church life when 
we find this fact, based upon accurate 
information, stated thus: "One church in 
Windsor County, with an average attend- 
ance of 75 had an enrolled membership 
of 271, of whom only 186 were finally 
found to be living. In another church the 
actual count for a period of six months 
showed only 10 per cent of the resident 
members attending church" (p. 21). 

3. Decline in church expenditures: 
"Church expenditures in Windsor County 
declined 2 per cent, and in Tompkins 
County 9 per cent in twenty years" (p. 13). 
"The churches of both counties are giving 
less and less pay to their ministers" (p. 14). 
"The amount of real pay declined 7 per 
cent in Windsor County and nearly 16 
per cent in Tompkins County" (p. 14). 

4. The character of the ministry: "In 

74 



RURAL CHURCH DECLINE 

Windsor County 75 per cent, and in 
Tompkins County 85 per cent, of the 
ministers have never had a full course 
of seven years' preparation in college and 
theological seminary" (p. 15). "In Windsor 
County 25 per cent, and in Tompkins 
County 33 per cent, are either foreign 
born or sons of foreigners, yet in both 
of these counties the Protestant popula- 
tion is of nearly pure stock" (p. 15). 

5. Decline in church attendance : "Church 
attendance in Windsor County fell off in 
twenty years nearly 31 per cent, and in 
Tompkins County 33 per cent" (p. 15). 
"So that in the two counties together 
the attendance declined in proportion to 
membership in 71 churches out of 85" 
(p. 16). "In the strictly rural districts 
in Windsor County there is a loss in church 
attendance of no less than 53 per cent" 
(p. 17). "The great decline in church 
attendance in the open country is the 
most alarming fact developed by the 
investigation" (p. 18). "In the smaller 
communities the more numerous the 
churches the greater the loss in attendance 
in the last twenty years" (p. 18). This 
75 



THE RURAL CHURCH MOVEMENT 

fact refutes the old plea that denomina- 
tional rivalry stimulated the churches to 
efficiency. "Thus in the small communities 
with only one church there has been a 
loss of total attendance of 30 per cent 
in twenty years, while in the small com- 
munities with two churches there was a 
loss of 50 per cent, and where there were 
more than two churches a loss of 55 per 
cent" (p. 18). "The tendency to stay 
away from church exists not only in the 
community in general, but in the church 
members as well" (p. 22). 

The Causes of Decline in the 
Rural Church 

It is often difficult for the untrained 
mind to distinguish between causes and 
effects, for the reason that an effect may 
become a new or secondary cause. No 
one may know how hog cholera originates 
on one's farm, but every farmer knows 
that one hog with the disease may infect 
the whole herd. 

I find up in my summer home in New 
Hampshire among the pines that a crotch 
and a crow's nest will cause the decay of 

76 



RURAL CHURCH DECLINE 

a giant pine; but a little thought leads 
one to search for the original wind or 
worm that killed or diseased the parent 
stem and caused the crotch that held 
the nest that caused the rot that killed 
the pine that God made. So a crank and 
a crotch (schism) in the religious life of 
many a rural community has furnished a 
sufficient cause to account for the decline 
and decay of many a nourishing country 
church. But who knows but that back 
of both there was not originally the work 
of some personal devil who could have 
been laid low by a more effective ministry? 
Some one should invent a "crankicide" 
for the country churches — a mixture of 
the oil of joy and the waters of salvation. 
The most important cause of the decline 
of the country church during this period 
we are now considering was the cause in 
common with the decline of rural life in 
general, namely, the growth of industrialism 
and the resultant urban movement of the 
rural population which created a real city 
problem for the churches; and, as a result, 
the consciousness of the church was cen- 
tered upon the cities rather than upon 
77 



THE RURAL CHURCH MOVEMENT 

the rural districts; and, to use a military 
figure, the church militant has in every 
age created for itself the most difficult 
missionary tasks by not guarding the 
rear. So it has awakened to the fact 
to-day, that it has lost prestige, if not 
control, in this vast rural domain. 

Another cause lies in the fact that during 
the period of population changes going on 
in rural communities the methods of church 
work in ministering to these new con- 
ditions have changed very little, if at all. 
While other groups of population were being 
socialized in consciousness and in activity, 
and even the forces of evil were becoming 
socially organized, yet the church, especially 
in the rural districts, was still placing 
emphasis in method and in message upon 
individualism to the exclusion of the social 
message of the gospel of Jesus. 

Evangelism in church and camp meeting 
during this period was mainly, if not 
almost exclusively, directed to catch the 
hardened adult sinners, while the young 
life of the rural communities was allowed 
to run wild, and no adequate provision 
was made for the recognition and culture 

78 



RURAL CHURCH DECLINE 

of the dawning religious consciousness of 
the boys and girls of the community, 
save where it was done by an exceptional 
minister or layman who was awake to 
this essential demand of all normal growth. 
Still another cause of decline was an 
inadequate, and relatively inferior, rural 
ministry: at first a result and later a cause 
of rural church decline. In my experience 
as a farmer boy during this period I 
remember only one country pastor in my 
home church who really loved the coun- 
try folk and worked among his people 
as though he were really called to that 
field. He had a lasting revival as to results. 
Then, as I remember it, these ministers 
preached mostly hell and damnation to 
come, and heaven and hope deferred, 
rather than a gospel that would tell us 
how to get rid of the brand we had already 
in our community, and how to bring a 
little more of heaven and hope into our 
daily life right down there where the crops 
were poor, the roads hilly and sometimes 
muddy, and the teams in most tight 
places balky. The fact is none of them 
were adequately educated for their job, 
79 



THE RURAL CHURCH MOVEMENT 

and there were among us those who had 
serious doubts as to whether some of 
them were ever called. 

Urbanized education, from the log school- 
house to the theological seminary, has 
been one of the most prolific causes of 
decline in the rural church. "Urbanitis" 
is the real name for what ails the rural 
church. When I was a student in the 
theological seminary, from 1895 to 1898, I 
do not recall that we ever heard of the 
rural church as a problem. We surely 
never heard of a plan for the country 
church. And until recently in all our 
theological schools no department ever took 
up the country life conditions as a problem 
for the church to treat seriously. As a 
matter of fact, sociology, as applied to 
rural life, is even now just beginning to 
be written and talked about by the leaders 
in this great educational movement for a 
better rural civilization. 

Deductions From These Facts 

and Causes 

1. We must make as a basis for the 
reorganization of the country church in 
80 



RURAL CHURCH DECLINE 

each community a social survey that will 
discover not only tendencies and facts, 
but will reveal also sources where causes 
may be discovered and remedies applied. 

2. We must work out a scheme for 
the socialization of the country church 
upon the central-parish plan for the whole 
community. 

3. We must insist upon a readjustment 
in the rural schools and in the curricula 
of the colleges and seminaries, so that 
not only shall the rural ministry be better 
equipped for the task, but also that the 
people of the open country may be taught 
to appreciate the larger social values of 
their inheritance, and build up in the 
country towns and hamlets a richer and 
nobler type of civilization. 

4. We must develop some adequate sys- 
tem of rural finance to help the farmers 
in their seasons of economic distress, and 
give the rural minister and his growing 
family, if he has one, adequate compensa- 
tion for the tasks his calling brings to 
his hands. 

5. We must learn some method of church 
federation that will remove the chief cause 

81 



THE RURAL CHURCH MOVEMENT 

of non-churchgoing, and bring into closer 
union the religious forces of country life 
so frequently now divided in the face of 
stronger organized enemies of religious 
progress. 



82 



CHAPTER VI 

AWAKENING OF INTEREST IN 
THE COUNTRY CHURCH 

It is a well-observed sociological law 
among all population groups that no social 
organization to meet human needs begins 
until those needs that have long been felt, 
and perhaps keenly perceived by indi- 
viduals here and there, are brought into 
the consciousness of the people as a whole 
and have been placed upon a scientific 
basis. 

So with the modern awakening of in- 
terest in the country church. There has 
been a feeling for a long time within the 
church at large, growing out of the lack 
of results in revival efforts in rural com- 
munities, the passing of the old-time camp 
meeting and the closing up of so many 
rural preaching places, and the breakdown 
of so many of the old circuits in the rural 
districts of Conferences, synods, dioceses, 
etc., that something was wrong with the 
country church. 

83 



THE RURAL CHURCH MOVEMENT 

Here and there some modern prophet 
has seen the trouble in more concrete and 
scientific form, so that we have articles 
written in leading church papers and mag- 
azines on the condition of country churches 
and their communities. These began to 
appear as early as 1886, and continue unto 
this day. Later on, commissions and survey- 
groups were appointed by various bodies to 
investigate and report. Still later organ- 
izations for the aid of country churches 
were formed in various sections. After- 
ward home missionary boards organized 
departments for the study and adminis- 
tration of the country church affairs as 
a part of a great connectional plan of 
missionary work. And as a result the 
country church is considered to-day by all 
groups of men interested in our modern 
civilization as one of the chief factors in 
the whole program of the Rural Life 
movement. 

It is, therefore, fitting that we devote 
our time to the study of the factors in 
the awakening of interest in this most 
important phase of the Rural Life move- 
ment. We will treat (1) the economic 

84 



AWAKENING OF INTEREST 

facts that are dynamic in the awakening 
of this interest, (2) the leaders in the 
Rural Life movement who recognized the 
church as an important factor, (3) the 
awakened national social consciousness to 
the importance of the conservation of the 
religious resources of country life, (4) 
specific surveys of rural regions, and 
(5) other factors, such as summer schools 
for rural leadership. 

Economic Facts the Dynamic of 
the Movement 

The following economic facts may be 
considered as causal to this awakening: 

1. The phenomenal growth of towns and 
cities during the last two decades led men 
to ask why people were leaving the coun- 
try for the city. 

£. The increased cost of living in the 
actual food products of the farms, while 
the farmer and the country folk seemed 
to be getting relatively poorer. 

3. The enormous profits of the middle- 
man, and the monopolies of transporta- 
tion companies of the marketing of the 
products of the country. 
85 



THE RURAL CHURCH MOVEMENT 

4. Forest fires, floods, and drought of 
whole farming regions, due in large measure 
to the denuding of watersheds by deforest- 
ation; also robbing of soil by poor methods 
of agriculture, resulting in excessive erosion 
in the open season in certain parts of the 
country. 

5. Scarcity of farm labor and the re- 
sultant high cost of farming, or the reduction 
in produce from the farms in certain 
regions. 

All these facts led to the focusing of 
attention upon the country, and men 
began to ask, "Where has been the leader- 
ship in the country?" And the religion- 
ist began to ask: "Why is the hurt of the 
daughter of my people not recovered? 
Why has not the church maintained its 
hold upon the people and defended them 
from exploitation and from their own 
ignorance, lack of foresight, and of co- 
operative organization?" 

Leaders of the Rural Life Movement 

1. Writers like Dugdale, on The Jukes, 
and Dr. Goddard, of Vineland, on The 
Kalikak Family, showed up the facts of 

86 



AWAKENING OF INTEREST 

physiological and moral degeneracy in a 
section of New York State and in southern 
New Jersey, where the country church 
had once been the dominant force in the 
field. 

2. The Rev. Henry Fairbanks, of 
Vermont; Samuel Dyke, of Boston; and 
President William DeW 7 itt Hyde, of Bow- 
doin College, in the earlier stages of the 
modern awakening from the middle eighties 
to 1906, pointed out, after scientific inves- 
tigation, the conditions confronting the 
country church of the present. 1 

3. The leaders in rural education in 
our State colleges of agriculture: Director 
Liberty H. Bailey, President Kenyon L. 
Butterfield, and other leaders like Sir 
Horace Plunkett, GifTord Pinchot, Warren 
H. Wilson, and chief among them for 
stimulating the movement for a better 
country church, as well as a better country 
life, is Theodore Roosevelt, who appointed 
the Commission on Country Life during 
the last year of his administration. 

That commission in its report had this 

1 See in Annals American Academy Political and Social Science, March, 
1912, p. 133, article on "The Rural Church." 

87 



THE RURAL CHURCH MOVEMENT 

to say about the country church: "The 
time has arrived when the church must 
take a larger leadership, both as an insti- 
tution and through its pastors, in the 
social reorganization of rural life." 1 

It can be truthfully said that the report 
of this commission marks an epoch in the 
Country Church movement. Dr. Butterfield, 
in his book on The Country Church and 
the Rural Problem, 2 gives this analysis of 
the task of the country church: "The 
country church (and its allies) is to main- 
tain and enlarge both individual and com- 
munity ideals under the inspiration and 
guidance of the religious motive, and to 
help rural people to incarnate these ideals 
in personal and family life, in industrial 
effort and political development, and in 
all social relationships." Sir Horace 
Plunkett, in The Rural Life Problem of 
the United States, 3 says, "More important, 
I believe, than is generally realized, from 
an economic and social point of view, are 
the rural churches." 

4. Due credit should be given to the 

iSee page 138, 1911 edition (Sturgis, Walton & Co.). 

2 See p. 75. 

a See p. 163. (The Macmillan Company.) 

88 



AWAKENING OF INTEREST 

men of science in the Carnegie Institute 
at Washington, and in the Rockefeller 
Institute for the Study and Cure of Dis- 
eases, for the facts they have brought to 
light as to the conditions of health and 
morals in rural communities, especially 
among that sturdy race of mountaineers 
of the South, where the hookworm disease 
has been so prevalent and the percentage 
of illiteracy so high. 

The National Social Consciousness 

Awakened to the Importance of 

Conservation of the Religious 

Resources of Country Life 

1. The conservation of the sources of 
ministerial supply. It is a well-known 
fact that hitherto about eighty-five per 
cent of our young men called to the Chris- 
tian ministry have come from the open 
country. In the pioneer days and later, 
when the rural church was at its best, 
it was a common thing for parents to pray 
that their sons would be called to the 
Christian ministry, and the best of them 
were often called. But now that the 
type of rural minister has so greatly 

89 



THE RURAL CHURCH MOVEMENT 

changed in many sections of the country, 
it is doubtful whether we can expect so 
large a percentage from that source to 
enter the ministry with the same degree 
of efficiency as in former days. And of 
this we are certain: that unless the type 
in some quarters changes for the better, 
it is doubtful whether any mothers or 
fathers will pray that their boys be called 
to the Christian ministry. We need, there- 
fore, to improve the country church for 
the sake of the ministerial source of supply 
for all the churches. 

2. The majority of our great leaders 
in commerce, trade, finance, and in 
engineering, also in the great professions 
of law, education, and government service 
were born in the country. Thousands of 
young men and women workers in the 
industries of the cities and centers of 
trade come directly from the country 
unacquainted with the temptations of the 
city streets, and many of them fall victims 
to the exploiters of youth in their inno- 
cence of the ways of the world. These 
facts have led to the awakening of the 
national consciousness to the importance 

90 



AWAKENING OF INTEREST 

of laying well the foundations of moral 
character and religious conviction during 
the formative period when the will should 
be strengthened to do good or resist evil 
when under moral stress. The country 
church, by virtue of our educational sys- 
tem, is the only institution outside the 
home in rural life that can give this train- 
ing to this great class of the nation's 
workers and potential leaders. 

3. There is a growing consciousness that 
the country church has a vital part to 
play in the leadership of the modern 
social movement as a whole. The country 
is the vast resource field for the national 
life itself, and the kind of leadership that 
controls that field and directs the social 
mind in channels of altruistic service based 
upon a broad social sympathy is the only 
way to maintain the union of all our 
national groups, and conserve for all the 
people the great resources of the nation. 
Just as in the pioneer days the country 
church with the itinerant preacher was the 
socializing factor in the building of the 
States and the nation, so to-day in the 
process of a wider and stronger social 
91 



THE RURAL CHURCH MOVEMENT 

synthesis in the nation, the country church 
is to be the most important factor in 
furnishing the leadership of the modern 
social movement. 

4. Another factor in the awakening of 
this consciousness of the importance of 
the country church has been little men- 
tioned by writers on the subject: It is 
the ebb tide of the urban movement — what 
we call the suburban movement of popula- 
tion. The well-to-do sons of the earlier 
period are returning to visit the home- 
steads ; and they find the abandoned farm, 
the broken-down church, and the religious 
fires gone out upon many church and 
family altars. They are asking, "Why 
this decline and decay?" and are lending 
their aid in making the survey that is 
revealing the causes of this decline and 
stirring the social will to action. 

Specific Surveys of Rural Regions 

1. The first to be mentioned is the 
work of that modern type of saint that 
should have erected to his memory a 
brass tablet with a halo of horns and a 
pedestal of hoofs — the muckraker, who 

92 



AWAKENING OF INTEREST 

wrote for The Country Gentleman, The 
Rural New Yorker, and The Saturday 
Evening Post. There should be mentioned 
also his twin brother of a different calling, 
the political spellbinder, who sent copy to 
the popular newspapers, and when he got 
to Congress sent his rural constituents a 
ten-cent package of garden seeds that, 
like his proposed reforms, never sprouted. 
But these two classes of "public servants" 
did much to bring to the attention of the 
American public the need for a scientific 
study of the rural field and a social reorgan- 
ization of our rural forces. 

2. Then followed the federal commission 
survey that set before the American people 
the rural life problem in its national 
proportions, while pointing out by careful 
scientific analysis the three great divisions 
of the problem — the economic, the social, 
and the religious — under which, by specific 
programs of organization and cooperation of 
all the rural forces, we should finally reach 
the desired results of better farming, better 
business, and better living in the country. 

3. Since then we have had the surveys 
conducted by the home missionary boards 

93 



THE RURAL CHURCH MOVEMENT 

of the denominations, chief among which 
have been those under the direction of 
the Country Church Department of the 
Presbyterian Board. 

4. Those conducted by the County Work 
Department of the Young Men's Christian 
Association which have led to splendid 
work, achievement, and propaganda in the 
arousing of the country folk to do for 
themselves, and the churches at large to 
do for the country regions, what for so 
long a period they have neglected to do — 
give the rural church trained leadership 
and adequate equipment. 

5. There should be mentioned also in 
this connection the survey conducted under 
the sanction, and published with the ap- 
proval and indorsement of the Federal 
Council of the Churches of Christ in 
America, and under the direction and 
supervision of the Rev. Charles Otis Gill 
and the Hon. Gilford Pinchot. 

Other Factors in the Rural 
Awakening 

1. One of the most important factors in 
arousing the whole country to the im- 

94 



AWAKENING OF INTEREST 

portance of the country church has been 
the summer schools for rural leadership 
conducted under the direction of leading 
colleges of agriculture, such as the one 
conducted for three consecutive sum- 
mers at Cornell University, and one at 
Amherst; also the summer schools for 
leadership under the direction of the Inter- 
national Young Men's Christian Associa- 
tion, such as are held every summer at 
Silver Bay, at Geneva, and at Estes Park. 

2. There should be mentioned also the 
departments of sociology recently estab- 
lished in our leading theological seminaries, 
where courses in rural leadership and the 
country church are now being offered, 
and conferences on the country church 
are held from time to time. 

3. These factors also include the writings 
and investigations by leading economists 
and sociologists in some of the leading 
State universities, also by the departments 
of university extension in rural education. 

4. The Department of Agriculture and 
the Bureau of Education of the federal 
government has through the work of the 
trained men in these departments played 

95 



THE RURAL CHURCH MOVEMENT 

no small part in awakening the national 
social consciousness to the importance of 
maintaining the leadership in the Rural 
Life movement of the country church as 
a conserving force in our rural civilization. 



96 



CHAPTER VII 
THE SOCIAL CENTER PARISH PLAN 

It should be acknowledged at the outset 
that the old circuit system was of great 
value in the pioneer period, and even 
later, in the development of the country 
church in America. This we have pointed 
out in a previous chapter. It should also 
be granted that the circuit system is still 
a practicable method in many parts of 
the rural domain even to-day, especially 
in the newer and sparsely settled regions. 
But, on the other hand, it should be 
frankly admitted by every one who knows 
the facts that the changed conditions in 
our rural life demand a change in our 
methods of ministering to the people. 

The emphasis in church work is no 
longer merely upon the saving of indi- 
viduals, but also upon the saving of the 
community, and in a larger sense the 
saving of our rural civilization from be- 
coming pagan. Furthermore, some of our 
leading thinkers and writers on the rural 
97 



THE RURAL CHURCH MOVEMENT 

situation declare that it will soon be a 
question of whether the churches in the 
rural districts will be able to save them- 
selves if the present conditions and methods 
of church life continue. Professor Carver 
says: "Unless the church makes itself a 
positive factor in the building up of the 
rural community and rural civilization, it 
will have to get out. And, in the main, 
the church must rebuild the rural com- 
munity through its own members by making 
them better farmers, better citizens, of 
more value to the community." 1 

To save individuals, to save the com- 
munity, and to save itself the country 
church must adopt an adequate plan to 
meet the demands of modern rural com- 
munity needs. In my judgment that plan 
best suited to function in this field is what 
I call the social center parish plan, or 
the circular system, as a substitute for 
the old circuit system. We will discuss 
this subject from the point of view (1) of 
the plan, (2) its value as a socializing 
agency, and (3) as to how it can be 
worked. 



iSee Rural Church Message, p. 115. 

98 



SOCIAL CENTER PARISH PLAN 

The Plan 
The plan involves three essential things 
after a thorough social survey has been 
made. The survey is so necessary and 
fundamental that it might be reckoned 
with the other three as the first of the 
four — a chart or map of the entire parish 
or community, a "program of work covering 
the details of the chart, and a staff of 
workers with voluntary or paid assistants. 

1. The social survey should include all 
the facts of the community: (1) those that 
may be termed the assets, or life-giving 
and community-serving resources; (2) those 
that may be termed liabilities, those that 
are life-destroying or community-destroy- 
ing factors. It should be a geological, 
biological, demographical, and sociological, 
as well as religious, survey of the entire 
community. 

2. The chart or map should be carefully 
made upon such a scale that every member 
of the parish can understand it. It should 
be put in usable form for distribution, 
but especially should it be placed in the 
pastor's study, or in the assembly hall 
where the facts of the community as well 

99 



THE RURAL CHURCH MOVEMENT 

as individual interest and responsibility 
could be pointed out. 

It should not only mark out the present 
location of farmhouses, schools, stores, 
shops, churches, roads, the best soils 
adapted for certain crops, etc., but it 
should include also what ought to be the 
location of these buildings and where roads 
ought to be changed, or reconstructed, or 
graded, new bridges built, and where all 
public improvements should be made. All 
these should be so carefully and graphically 
presented by charts, photographs, and 
lettering that it would be a means of 
public education in what the community 
ought to be. Striking contrasts of what 
is and what ought to be in rural life can 
be very easily and cheaply presented by 
paper and ink, or by photographs and 
posters. And these are often more con- 
vincing and saving than some sermons I 
have heard in rural churches. 

3. A program of work. To illustrate: 
I have in my mind our summer camp all 
charted and mapped out, and a program 
of work for next year, and for several 
years perhaps. I know all the dead trees 
100 



SOCIAL CENTER PARISH PLAN 

that need to be cut next summer, the 
stumps and stones I want to remove from 
the soil, the paths I am going to make 
in the woods, the kind of treatment the 
soil of the garden requires, the kind of a 
boathouse I want to build, the color and 
quality of the paint to be put on the 
buildings, and many other details. So 
the rural leader of the social center parish 
should have outlined a program of work 
so that he will not only see things done 
in the community, but will actually get 
the young life at work, in order that it 
may function in the essentials of rural 
leadership and community service. How 
are you going to keep the boys in the 
church and train them for real service 
in the Kingdom? That should be planned 
out before there is even a tendency for 
the group to lapse from the Sunday school, 
and leave the farm for a prodigal experience. 
How are you going to keep that rich 
old lady, a little eccentric perhaps, from 
leaving her property to the endowment of 
a dog kennel or a feline sanitarium, and 
persuade her, instead, to endow some 
scholarships for the country boys in some 
101 



THE RURAL CHURCH MOVEMENT 

form of research that will help the com- 
munity, or to give it for the employment 
of a young man or a young woman to 
supervise the play life of the community, 
so that the children will not fight like cats 
and dogs at their play? In every detail 
of community betterment this plan makes 
possible a program and a performance. 

4. A staff of workers. This is absolutely 
necessary; and where volunteers cannot be 
had it will require a paid staff, such as 
the County Work Department is putting 
into some of the communities through its 
statesmanlike program for rural community 
betterment. 

The graduates of the agricultural college 
and rural high school, where rural sociology 
is taught, can be enlisted for this kind of 
work. Instead of trying to get every 
young man to express his religious ex- 
perience in the same way, as in my boy- 
hood days, we will come up to the posi- 
tion of Paul in recognizing that in the 
work of the Kingdom there are varieties 
of gifts, but the same Spirit. 

So I would have a specialist on soils, 
one on plant pests and diseases, one on 
102 



SOCIAL CENTER PARISH PLAN 

stock-breeding and dairying, one on rural 
home-planning, one on hygiene and san- 
itation, one on recreation and amusement 
in rural communities, one on religious 
education and adolescence, and one on 
any other important phase of community 
need brought out in the survey and 
charted in my program. 

Its Value as a Socializing Agency 

Such an institution as the rural church 
organized on the social center parish plan 
has two essential social aims as its func- 
tion in the community: (1) to socialize 
the community in consciousness; (2) to 
socialize the community in its activity. 

1. Socializing a community in conscious- 
ness. A community is socialized in con- 
sciousness when it comes to acknowledge 
the necessary facts in social evolution of 
the need for social cleavage in community 
building, and at the same time develops 
that social sympathy that keeps these 
class-conscious groups in sympathetic co- 
operation with each other in carrying on 
the work necessary to the fullest life of 
the community. In other words, the church 
103 



THE RURAL CHURCH MOVEMENT 

should so broaden the people's definition 
of the kingdom of God on earth that every 
man and woman who is doing a necessary 
part of the world's work which has to do 
with the health and happiness of the 
community as a whole may be conscious 
of doing the work of the Kingdom, and 
should, therefore, receive a just share of 
the rewards society offers of social esteem 
and of economic values, wages, or goods, 
produced by labor of whatever sort. With 
such a chart and program as I have 
described above it would not be difficult 
to develop such a social consciousness in 
the minds of all the people of a parish. 

2. Socializing a community in activity. 
When is a community socialized in activity? 
When, awakened to the consciousness of 
its needs, it has developed adequate organ- 
ization of its population, invented efficient 
social machinery, and trained effective 
social engineers to make use of its avail- 
able resources for all the people within 
the community so that they will be in 
possession of that equality of opportunity 
which means, not the chance to secure 
control of resources and exploit them for 
104 



SOCIAL CENTER PARISH PLAN 

personal or for corporate ends, but the 
equality of opportunity to secure for each 
a just share of the products of industry 
through distribution according to the meas- 
ure of services rendered. In other words, 
a community is socialized when it has 
developed a social medium through which 
there is a reciprocal correspondence be- 
tween human needs and available resources. 
To me this is, in brief, the function of 
the country church as a socializing agency 
in the building up of the community life 
that will correspond to the New Testament 
conception of the kingdom of God on earth. 

How the Plan Can Be Worked 

No plan, however scientific and workable, 
will work itself. It has to be worked, 
and by a man who has the essential 
elements of social leadership in his make-up. 

1. Such a plan must have a leader who 
loves work, who can sense the needs of a 
community, who has a constructive imag- 
ination, and who has will power, or a 
persistent purpose to succeed when he 
knows he is right. 

2. It requires an adequate financial plan 

105 



THE RURAL CHURCH MOVEMENT 

of support. A fool project may succeed 
if properly financed, while a reasonable 
plan may fail if not properly financed. 
In most communities the people will pay 
for what they get if they are convinced 
the goods are worth the money. Some- 
times it is necessary to introduce the 
goods by gift, or cut the price to one half 
the value. So in some rural communities 
it will be necessary at first to get financial 
support for the central parish plan from 
private gifts or from denominational funds 
outside the community to be served. The 
County Work Department has demon- 
strated the feasibility of this plan. 

3. Such a plan on a large scale involves 
a more statesmanlike policy of the admin- 
istration of home missions and church 
extension funds by some of the Protestant 
denominations than has been evident 
hitherto. Instead of doling out drips to 
defunct churches in overchurched com- 
munities, or for petty plans for new enter- 
prises of little importance, these boards 
would set aside a fund for establishing a 
few central parishes in communities that 
would act as imitation centers for other 
106 



SOCIAL CENTER PARISH PLAN 

communities. It seems to me we would 
make greater progress in home missions 
and church extension than we are now 
making under our present policy, which 
we have inherited from the pioneer past. 



107 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE SOCIAL FUNCTION OF THE 
RURAL SUNDAY SCHOOL 

There is hardly any other institution 
in the open country that has greater pos- 
sibilities of usefulness in the Rural Church 
movement than the rural Sunday school 
when properly organized and directed. 

The reason why so many rural Sunday 
schools have failed and ceased to exist 
is largely because we have measured the 
success of such schools not by their actual 
achievements but by the number of scholars 
in attendance, and therefore our methods 
of Sunday school work have too often 
been directed chiefly toward "bribing" 
children to attend (the ticket, card, book, 
Bible system, for example) rather than in 
giving them something to do for them- 
selves and for the community. 

Under the new rural leadership there is 

dawning a new day for the usefulness of 

the rural Sunday school, when the emphasis 

in religious education is put upon the 

108 



THE RURAL SUNDAY SCHOOL 

child as well as upon the subject-matter 
taught, and when the adult Bible classes 
will be organized and taught with reference 
to service they can render the community, 
the State, the nation, and humanity as a 
whole, as well as with reference to the 
moral and religious truths of the Bible. 

In this chapter we wish to treat (1) The 
Social Conditions Affecting the Sunday 
School and (2) The Social and Political 
Value of the Sunday School. 1 

The Social Conditions Affecting the 
Sunday School 

It was the social condition of the chil- 
dren of Gloucester, England, in 1781, 
that led Robert Raikes to employ certain 
women to teach them on the Sabbath 
day reading and the church catechism. 
It was the marked improvement of these 
social conditions, as a result of this ex- 
periment, that led to the founding of 
the Sunday school as a permanent re- 
ligious social institution. So in modern 
times we must look to the social condi- 
tions of the people as they live their life 

1 See Encyclopedia of Sunday Schools, Thomaa Nelson & Sons. 

109 



THE RURAL CHURCH MOVEMENT 

on the Sundays and during the week to 
find the real forces that affect favorably or 
unfavorably the modern Sunday school. 

1. The extension of public education in 
all modern civilized countries has made it 
unnecessary to teach reading in the Sunday 
school, and the conflict of ethnic religious 
groups in modern nations has put the 
entire burden of religious education of 
children upon the Sunday school, except 
where a parochial system is in vogue. 

2. Modern economic, industrial, and com- 
mercial life makes it impossible in the 
majority of homes for any adequate form 
of religious instruction to be carried on. 
Therefore by the selective social process 
the Sunday school has become the institu- 
tion for religious instruction. 

3. Social conditions have also changed 
the point of emphasis in religious educa- 
tion in the Sunday school. Formerly the 
emphasis in Sunday school instruction was 
upon the Bible truths as subject-matter 
to be taught; to-day the emphasis is upon 
the child in his social environment as the 
subject of our study. The emphasis in 
Bible study has been placed upon the 

110 



THE RURAL SUNDAY SCHOOL 

social conditions that led men, under divine 
inspiration, to write the books of the 
Bible; to-day the social conditions that 
affect the children and youth have com- 
pelled Sunday school experts to adopt a 
policy of graded lessons that will enable 
the school to meet these conditions and 
mold the plastic life into channels of 
moral and religious expression. As a recent 
article 1 puts it: "We come to find the 
demands of life and the demands of educa- 
tional theory peculiarly harmonious, if they 
are not actually identical." 

4. Modern populations are divided into 
three well-defined groups dwelling in three 
distinct zones: (1) the industrials, largely 
foreign, in the United States, in the older 
congested quarters of the cities; (2) the 
commuters of the suburbs; and (3) the 
farmers of the rural sections, which in- 
cludes the mining and lumbering camps 
and the minor pursuits of the open country. 

In the first zone the Sunday school as 
now conducted is adversely affected by 
the social conditions prevailing. The 
wealthy, who own homes and reside in 

1 See Religious Education, Vol. VIII, April, 1913. 
Ill 



THE RURAL CHURCH MOVEMENT 

the city, downtown, have a diminishing 
birth rate, and are often migratory, thus 
affecting Sunday school attendance. The 
poorer classes are renters or tenants, and 
while having more children per family, 
are either indifferent to the Sunday school, 
or are too poor to send their children, or 
by constant moving from one section to 
another get out of touch with the church 
and Sunday school. Not owning their 
dwellings, they have little interest in the 
moral uplift of the community, and are 
not so loyal to the religious institutions 
that have to do with Christian culture. 
A recent survey showed that all Protestant 
denominations are losing in Sunday school 
enrollment in the congested quarters of the 
cities, while the population is increasing. 

In the second zone, the suburbs, the 
social conditions are more favorable. Here 
the Sunday school enrollment is increasing. 
Here are the comparatively well-to-do 
who own their own homes, rear children, 
and are interested in the social conditions 
of the community affecting the morals 
and health of their children. Here the 
modern organized men's Bible classes have 
112 



THE RURAL SUNDAY SCHOOL 

the largest enrollment and are most active. 
Here buildings adequate for efficient Sun- 
day school work are erected. Here the 
graded lessons have received the most 
encouraging support, due to the more 
effective available groups of teachers. 

In the third zone, the rural domain, 
the Sunday school is adversely affected, 
because of the lack of adaptation to the 
new conditions prevailing. Here the union 
school predominates at the expense of 
denominational aggressiveness. Here the 
changing social conditions due to rural 
education in agricultural colleges and in 
the consolidated district schools are making 
it increasingly necessary for the rural 
churches to consolidate in Sunday school 
work. A new group of men and women 
educated as rural leaders are to take the 
lead in making the Sunday school more 
effective as a social force in the rural 
communities. 

Other Social Conditions Affecting the 
Sunday School 

Other social conditions affecting the Sun- 
day school may be stated as follows: 
113 



THE RURAL CHURCH MOVEMENT 

1. A change in the mind of the public 
with respect to the observance of Sunday. 
It is viewed more and more as a day of 
rest and of recreation; a day of social 
pleasure rather than of serious study of 
the subject-matter of a modern Sunday 
school curriculum. 

2. Increased facilities for travel, recrea- 
tion, and amusement on the Sabbath. The 
half holiday on Saturday and the Sunday 
trains and trolleys permit thousands of 
the common people to visit at long range 
from their homes over the week end; 
and they seldom go to Sunday school when 
away from home. The automobile per- 
mits the well-to-do to utilize Sunday in 
travel over long stretches of improved 
State and country roads, and to visit 
friends at a distance. 

3. The crowded curriculum of the public 
schools both in the grades and in the 
high schools makes many parents opposed 
to serious study by their children in the 
modern Sunday school where lessons are 
assigned. Also the efficiency of the public 
press and the magazines, as well as the 
religious periodicals, makes it possible for 

114 



THE RURAL SUNDAY SCHOOL 

many to balk at the idea of a Sunday 
school. 

4. The failure, in large measure, of the 
church to master the modern social move- 
ment which is in many ways utilizing the 
Sabbath for its own propaganda without 
the church and Sunday school. 

5. The increased migration of popula- 
tion in well-defined currents of movement, 
urban and rural, latitudinal and lon- 
gitudinal, within the national domain; and 
international, designated as emigration and 
immigration. Until new adjustments can 
be made these currents of population must 
necessarily affect the Sunday school as an 
educational institution. 

6. The high cost of living which results 
in enforced celibacy with its resultant 
social vices; the high prices of land in 
and near population centers, and the high 
cost of building materials, as well as 
skilled labor in the trades, with corre- 
sponding low wages of women, and un- 
skilled male labor. All these lead to a de- 
creased birth rate, and to social conditions 
not favorable to religious instructions so 
far as current methods are concerned. 

115 



THE RURAL CHURCH MOVEMENT 

7. The difficulty of change sufficiently 
radical to be effective in results, due to the 
fact that the forces that control the social 
machinery of the church in relation to 
the Sunday school are, in so many instances, 
a conservative majority of men incapable 
of change due to physiological and psy- 
chological facts. 

But all these social conditions affecting 
the Sunday school adversely or otherwise 
only serve to arouse the social conscious- 
ness of the church, which will give the 
modern Sunday school its real opportunity 
for effective service to our generation. 

The Social and Political Value of 
the Sunday School 

The value of the Sunday school as a 
social and political agency must be deter- 
mined from the point of view of what it 
may do to help establish upon this earth 
the world kingdom of Jesus Christ as 
he conceived it and as his apostles preached 
concerning it, the record of which furnishes 
the foundation textbook for every school 
of Christian education; but not the only 
textbook, for, "I suppose that even the 
116 



THE RURAL SUNDAY SCHOOL 

world itself would not contain the books 
that should be written." 1 Also by its 
present opportunity to do effective work 
toward that end, and also by its methods 
of work in dealing with this world problem. 
The kingdom of God on earth is both 
a political and social idea. The Sunday 
school is one of the chief agencies in the 
establishment of that kingdom. The social 
and political value of the Sunday school 
may be expressed by these facts: 

1. It furnishes a practical method and 
place of meeting of all classes of society on 
a democratic basis. This the public school 
does also, but not in the same sense and 
with the same motive as the Sunday 
school. It thus places a badge of honor 
upon all the children of men who seek for 
knowledge of God. It recognizes the fact 
of social cleavage without which there 
could be no nation-building; but it denies 
social conflict by its very method of service. 

2. It is organized on the group plan, 
presenting as do other educational institu- 
tions an opportunity for helpful rivalry 
of class-conscious groups, while at the 

x See John 21. 25 (American Revised Version). 

117 



THE RURAL CHURCH MOVEMENT 

same time developing a mass-consciousness 
in which all groups are included as one 
unit — akin to what we sometimes call 
"college spirit." This is a sociological 
and political fact of the greatest value 
in the education of a people. It is laying 
the foundations for a social synthesis of 
wider dimensions which will ultimately 
result in the consciousness of the kingdom 
of God, and, we trust, in the fact of organ- 
ized humanity in "the brotherhood of 
man and the federation of the world." 

The evil result in the history of Chris- 
tian education under denominationalism 
has been the tendency to denominational 
caste, or religious social stratification; so 
that instead of being a help to religious 
progress it has been a fruitful source of 
religious strife, intolerance, and bigotry. 
But this is happily being overcome to-day 
by a spirit of Christian federation and 
comity among all the churches. 

3. It deals with the most susceptible part 
of the population — the children and youth. 
Under the modern graded system it has 
the opportunity to instruct the millions 
of the most promising youth of our genera- 
118 



THE RURAL SUNDAY SCHOOL 

tion so that they may see the value of social 
cleavage as a part of the social process, 
and at the same time be taught the mean- 
ing of social justice that requires of them 
enlistment in the warfare against organ- 
ized vice and sin; and, further, it has the 
chance to give them that view of society 
that will enable them to see the obliga- 
tions they bear to one another in the 
great social fabric of which they are a 
part, and give to them a social conscious- 
ness that will overcome class consciousness 
and lead them to respect the rights of 
others in the fields of opportunity. 

4. It uses a textbook that deals with 
social and political facts of human history 
and contains those moral and spiritual 
truths that furnish the main supports of 
an enduring government: (1) honor to all 
men who do the world's work, (2) a heart 
interest in human brotherhood, (3) rev- 
erence for God, and (4) respect for 
authority. 1 

The international system of Sunday 
school lessons when put upon a modern 
graded system of instruction, with well- 

1 Compare 1 Pet. 2. 17. 

119 



THE RURAL CHURCH MOVEMENT 

chosen extra-biblical material, will furnish 
a social and political dynamic of the most 
far-reaching significance. 

5. Through its missionary education and 
"philanthropy it furnishes a school of uni- 
versal social values — a world view of democ- 
racy in the truest sense of that word. 

Illustrations of the awakening of this 
consciousness among the nations to-day as 
a result of this propaganda are not wanting, 
nor the splendid responses of the Christian 
nations to this new spirit of the Oriental 
peoples. 

6. The church must furnish a binder for 
the unmixable and yet useful elements of 
Protestant Christianity; and later a binder 
for the Greek, Roman Catholic, and 
Protestant groups of Christendom; and 
still later, in God's own time, the great 
ethnic group of Judaism must be bound 
("grafted") in. 

In many sections the union Sunday 
school has been doing this service in a 
small way — and by conventions, national 
and international, in a much larger way, 
until, to-day, we have the Federation of 
the Churches of Christ in America, with 
120 



THE RURAL SUNDAY SCHOOL 

affiliations reaching across the seas, and 
forming a basis of federation with other 
groups. We have the World's Christian 
Student Federation, under the splendid 
leadership of men like Dr. John R. Mott. 
No factor has been of greater social and 
political value in this result than the 
Sunday schools where these young men 
and women have been trained. And under 
the guidance of God's Spirit in men of 
social vision the Sunday school will yet 
solve the problem of the world's strife 
by furnishing the plan by which all these 
elements of religious, social, moral, and 
political value will be brought together 
into harmony with the will of God under 
the banner of Jesus Christ. 

7. The adult Bible class, now being organ- 
ized so widely in the Sunday school, with 
modern vision of social needs, the result 
of religious social surveys, is one of the 
most encouraging religious facts of modem 
times. With scientific social information, 
with well equipped social organization for 
team work in the community, and with 
religious and moral truth backed by the 
dynamic of a Christian consciousness, there 
121 



THE RURAL CHURCH MOVEMENT 

is no estimating the social and political 
values that may result within the next 
decade or two. With such groups of 
men and women on guard in our several 
communities, with an organization that is 
world-wide in its federative reach, it re- 
quires no gift of prophecy to foretell that 
the nations that have won the first battles 
for political integrity and social justice 
will never go back to the old regime of 
political corruption and social wrong 
through special privilege and individual 
greed and cunning. Then we shall be in 
sight of that kingdom that cometh not 
with observation — a kingdom of righteous- 
ness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. 



122 



CHAPTER IX 
THE RURAL BIBLE CLASS 

This is an age when we are measuring 
every organization and institution on the 
basis of efficiency. The church and Sunday 
school are no longer judged alone by the 
intake of members, but also by the output 
of members in forms of real service to the 
community in which they are located. 

There is no institution so well fitted to 
express this phase of church efficiency as 
the Bible class in the Sunday school, and 
in the open country the adult Bible class 
is beginning to be looked upon as one of 
the most promising factors in solving the 
problem of the country church and other 
problems of the Rural Life movement. 

It is our purpose in this chapter to point 
out some of the practical things a well 
organized rural Bible class can do in the 
community. 

Some Practical Things a Rural Bible 
Class Can Do 
We have gotten beyond the time when 
123 



THE RURAL CHURCH MOVEMENT 

a Bible class composed of men and women 
can be said to be a successfully conducted 
class when it does nothing more than 
study, or hear discussed, the lessons taken 
from the Bible in a series, as in the Inter- 
national Lessons, or from the Bible in the 
graded lessons, using extra-biblical mate- 
rials, however striking and useful. We 
consider a Bible class so composed to-day 
successful only as it puts into actual 
service, individual or social, through the 
activities of individuals or groups toward 
other individuals or groups in the com- 
munity or the wider ranges of human 
interest, the truths learned in the class, 
or discovered through the activities of 
the class. 

Assuming that most of us are agreed 
upon this proposition, the question arises, 
and very naturally: what are some of 
the practical things a Bible class, say of 
men, in a rural Sunday school, can do 
in and for the community, or for the State, 
the nation, or the world at large in the 
sense of the kingdom of God on earth? 

1. It can organize itself so as to become 
a real working force in sympathetic co- 
124 



THE RURAL BIBLE CLASS 

operation with all legitimate social forces 
in the community. Its first task is to 
develop social organization by which it can 
express its real life. This will make it 
socially conscious and capable of being 
socially active. 

2. It can survey the community and 
discover many facts that could never be 
known to the class as a class without 
it — facts of needs to be met; facts of forces 
to be utilized, facts of resources to be con- 
served, instances where cooperation would 
increase income and save waste of labor 
and worry. This is as fundamental as the 
first thing. This can be done with a small 
group of men. 

3. Another group can study the eco- 
nomic facts of how the community is fed, 
or should be fed: farm values and re- 
sources, the conditions of the market, and 
how cooperation in buying and selling 
would increase the wealth and the welfare 
of the community. This should also in- 
clude the question of economic dependence 
upon other parts of the country, and even 
the other parts of the world. This should 
lead to practical methods of Christian 

125 



THE RURAL CHURCH MOVEMENT 

service to fellowmen in the community, 
and in a widening of the whole range of 
human regard. 

4. Another group could be delegated to 
look after the interests of the public 
schools in the community and in the 
county or State; to find out what are 
the modern movements and improvements 
in the system of rural education, and to 
see to it that the schools have the best 
the community is entitled to and can 
afford. This would involve the creating 
of a definite public opinion as to the kind 
of a teacher and equipment required to 
conduct the work of the school. 

5. Another group could look after the 
health of the community; could find out 
the causes of sickness and suggest methods 
of prevention, and also keep the country 
doctor keyed up to his high calling, so 
that he will be able to give the latest 
treatment in cases of accident or disease. 
This would involve also teaching some 
lessons to the young men and women of 
"first aid to the injured" in case of acci- 
dents on the farm, or in the woods, or by 
the streams, as in cases of drowning. 

126 



THE RURAL BIBLE CLASS 

As a matter of known facts the death rate 
is now higher in the open country in some 
States than it is in the congested cities 
that are well looked after by an efficient 
board of health. 1 

6. It could also, through a small group 
of its members, make a study of the life 
of some drunkard in the community, tracing 
back his life to all factors that have con- 
tributed to his misery and the humiliation 
of his family. Thus they would have 
something definite by which a canvass for 
local option or prohibition of the liquor 
traffic could be carried on in the State 
and community. Likewise, by a cautious 
selection of some able group, a study could 
be made of the moral evils and social 
vices of rural life (and they are as acute 
there as in the cities) and suggest proper 
remedies, like the custodial care, in some 
institution, of the feeble-minded prostitute 
who is often the demoralizing agent of 
the country community. 2 

7. It could study the life of the success- 
ful men and women of the community 

1 See Health Report of New York State, January, 1914. 

2 See The Kallikak Family, by Henry H. Goddard, Ph.D. 

127 



THE RURAL CHURCH MOVEMENT 

and thus find out the normal factors that 
are available for success to the thrifty. 
This is to be emphasized as strongly as 
the abnormal conditions to be remedied. 

8. Such a class can study the importance 
of wholesome play and recreation for a 
healthy normal growth of the young life 
of the community, and thus lead to the 
organization of field days, and periodic 
play contests for the young life of the 
whole community, such as is being done 
so successfully by the County Work De- 
partment of the Young Men's Christian 
Association in the open country. It could 
also help to create a high standard of 
recreation for the townspeople and the 
village folk, so as to avoid the low grades 
of amusements so often foisted upon rural 
communities by fakers. 

9. It can make the Bible become a 
more real book to the people by choosing 
its themes of study from the great chap- 
ters and books of the Old and New Testa- 
ments that are rich with rural imagery 
and show the rural-mindedness of Jesus 
and the prophets. For example, the twenty- 
third psalm, the fifty-third chapter of 

128 



THE RURAL BIBLE CLASS 

Isaiah, the parables of the sower and of 
the tares, the lost sheep, and the prodigal 
son. 1 

10. It can train the people of the open 
country to see the enemies of their crops 
and their poultry and dairy herds, and 
show them where and how remedies can 
be had to rid the farms of these pests, 
especially by cooperative efforts with the 
State and national bureaus that are eager 
to help, and must first have the way 
prepared for them by local leadership. 
And by such lessons, which have their 
rural background in the very book from 
which the class is named, the class, by 
personal effort, can lead through these 
lessons to the greater lessons of soul culture 
that will rid the individual and the com- 
munity of the pests of the soul and the 
higher life, thus restoring, through God's 
grace in Jesus Christ, the normal image 
in which man was created, even his image 
and his likeness, the record of which, 
and the process by which it may be re- 
stored, are in the Book. 

11. The rural Bible class can also be- 



1 Compare Chapter II. 

129 



THE RURAL CHURCH MOVEMENT 

come a vital force in the teaching of 
patriotism. Such a class can arrange for 
a series of meetings during the year on 
occasions like the national holidays, when 
they will count for most in awakening the 
social conscience upon matters that call 
for civic service. Here will be discovered 
by the best talent available the political, 
social, and economic problems of vital 
interest to the community and to the 
nation as a whole: such problems as 
industrial democracy, civic righteousness, 
and social justice, child labor, women's 
wages, industrial peace, problems of na- 
tional health, social hygiene, divorce laws, 
compensation for accidents in rural indus- 
tries, also problems of rural welfare, 
immigration and farm labor, race antag- 
onism and social cleavage in country life; 
problems of land tenure, size of farms, 
intensive agriculture, conservation of rural 
resources, the rural church and the rural 
school. 

Here also in the open country emphasis 
must be placed upon the relation of home- 
making to national character and the 
responsibility of parents for the moral 
130 



THE RURAL BIBLE CLASS 

training, religious nurture, and education 
of the young life of the nation. This is 
the kind of patriotism that counts for 
something. 

Biblical material is not wanting, and 
history is full of examples of patriotic 
service rendered to the nation in the rear- 
ing of noble men and women in the country 
homesteads of the republic who have proven 
their worth as patriots in every crisis of 
our nation's history. 

It is to be assumed that methods of 
teaching patriotism in the Sunday schools 
should become a part of the progressive 
program of the church for real religious 
education. No department of the church 
is better prepared to do this than the 
Bible class of the rural Sunday school; it 
should, therefore, find a prominent place 
in its curriculum of social studies. 

All of these subjects for discussion and 
practical work could be grouped about 
certain days of the year, and under proper 
direction become vital factors in the mold- 
ing of public opinion and in the achieve- 
ment of actual progress in the rural life. 
These things have been done by groups 
131 



THE RURAL CHURCH MOVEMENT 

of men organized under a different name. 
There are cases where the rural Bible 
class has carried out such a program. 

Such a plan of work will make our rural 
Sunday schools a real force in the com- 
munities where they are so organized, and 
will help to restore to many a rural region 
the lost domain of the country church 
and help to reestablish the primacy of 
the spiritual and intellectual leadership of 
the rural parish and parson. 



132 



CHAPTER X 

COOPERATION AND FEDERATION 
OF RURAL CHURCHES 

The one outstanding fact of the Rural 
Life movement, apart from that of the 
need for intelligent leadership, is that of 
the need of cooperation and federation of 
rural social forces for the benefit of the 
farmers, the merchants, the mechanics, and 
the professions in rural communities. 

So in the Rural Church movement, the 
one outstanding fact, apart from the need 
of a better trained rural ministry, is the 
need of cooperation and federation of 
rural churches. The people themselves 
have come to see the enormous economic 
waste in the present system of church 
rivalry in rural communities, and are either 
ceasing to attend and support competing 
institutions, 1 or are planning schemes of 
cooperation and federation in certain places, 
as in the town of Victor, Montana, 2 or in 

iSee The Country Church, Pinchot and Gill, p. 211, 212. 

2 See The Church of the Open Country, Warren H. Wilson, p. lOOff. 

133 



THE RURAL CHURCH MOVEMENT 

the town of Tyringham, Massachusetts, 1 or 
in many other like situations that could 
be mentioned. 

A minister trained in rural sociology 
and economics discovered in his parish 
four farmers living at the four corners of 
the crossroads, each one delivering with 
his horse and wagon two cans of milk at 
the creamery five miles distant, requiring 
them to get up an hour or two earlier 
and lose two or three hours each for the 
best part of the mornings, besides the loss 
of the wear and tear of the wagons and 
horses, when one man with one horse could 
have hauled the eight cans to the same 
place, and left free for other forms of 
cooperative effort the other three men, 
horses, and wagons; besides, they could 
have saved by cooperative buying of feed 
for the cattle and food for their families. 

This is not an exaggerated case. It 
testifies to the great need in rural life 
of cooperation and organization in farm 
marketing, buying and production, which 
has led the Federal Department of Agri- 

l The Christian Advocate, November 6, 1913; see article, "Demonstrating 
Rural Progress," by G. F. Wells. 

134 



COOPERATION AND FEDERATION 

culture to organize a new bureau for 
meeting this need under the direction of 
Professor Carver, who is so eminently 
fitted for such a task. It is our purpose 
in this chapter merely to outline the 
principles and policies required to effect 
in rural communities (1) denominational 
cooperation, (2) interdenominational co- 
operation, and (3) church federation. 

Denominational Cooperation in 
Rural Life 

The old circuit system in the open 
country ceased to be a socializing agency 
after the close of the pioneer stage of 
rural development because it was based 
upon isolated units of population. The 
circular system, or the central parish plan, 
should supersede the circuit system in the 
open country to-day because it is best 
adapted for the new demands for coopera- 
tion in rural life. This will come about 
by a natural process of community -building 
after we have socialized the leadership in 
rural life, and other agencies of rural 
progress have been socialized. 

We mean by denominational cooperation 
135 



THE RURAL CHURCH MOVEMENT 

the cooperation of churches of the same 
denomination. I was in a town in Penn- 
sylvania some years ago where there were 
fourteen churches of the same denomination 
in a population of forty-nine thousand. 
Several of these were so located that they 
were in destructive competition with each 
other, when they could have cooperated, 
or even consolidated, and served the entire 
community more effectively. 

The same is true of many of the old 
"circuits" in the open country where the 
gospel, like the mail, is peddled around 
on the rural free delivery plan instead of 
having the people come together at some 
central point where they could be socialized 
and better served on a cooperative basis. 
This requires a plan of local cooperation 
under local leadership. 

In the next place, it means connectional 
cooperation of the whole denomination 
through a statesmanlike policy of the 
home missions and church extension agen- 
cies, such as we shall outline in a later 
chapter. The socialized church cannot be 
successfully established in some rural com- 
munities without connectional aid from the 
136 



COOPERATION AND FEDERATION 

whole denomination — first, in securing the 
proper kind of a building and equipment, 
and, second, in securing properly trained 
ministers to lead and trained men and 
women to assist. 

Our recommendations for denominational 
cooperation in establishing the central par- 
ish plan are as follows: 

1. Make a careful scientific survey of 
the rural field with reference to present 
conditions of need. Carefully locate the 
natural community centers and chart them 
on a map for the use of the interested 
groups of the denomination, local or 
general. 

2. Outline the plans for a parish or 
neighborhood house and place of worship 
adequate to meet the needs of the whole 
parish, with the schoolhouses or chapels for 
preaching places marked and distances to 
the central building measured. 

3. Secure an adequate appropriation of 
the home missions and church extension 
funds to supplement the local budget in 
"putting across" such a plan. 

4. Fix a minimum salary for the rural 
minister and religious worker, as we do 

137 



THE RURAL CHURCH MOVEMENT 

for the missionaries in the foreign fields, 
and as the County Work Department of 
the International Young Men's Christian 
Association is so successfully doing. 

5. Examine candidates who are volun- 
teers for this field as a place for life invest- 
ment just as we do in other fields of re- 
ligious work, and send out such only as 
are prepared. While it may be necessary 
to allow the man to choose his field, it 
it equally important that the church should 
insist on choosing the man for any specific 
task in any field. 

Such a plan also involves the coopera- 
tion of the educational agencies of the 
denomination at large: (1) the theological 
seminaries should give definite courses in 
rural sociology and in rural homiletics, 
and in rural church economics; (2) study 
courses in the English Bible should be 
arranged with reference to the rural back- 
ground of the Old and New Testament 
literature, and especially with reference to 
the rural-mindedness of the prophets and 
of Jesus; (3) courses in rural sociology in 
the colleges and schools of agriculture 
should be arranged so as to include the 
138 



COOPERATION AND FEDERATION 

problems of the rural church; (4) the 
Christian Associations in these institutions 
should be induced to adopt courses for 
Bible study classes in their Association 
work during the college year. 

Interdenominational Cooperation 

This can be secured, in the first place, 
by those denominations that have similar 
forms of church polity and worship. This 
has been proven possible in Canada, in 
the mission fields, and in specific commu- 
nities. Here the names of the denomina- 
tions are slightly changed so as to eliminate 
the distinctive causes of difference which 
have ceased to have any vital significance, 
such as points of the compass, or matters 
of history or of psychology. 

Another way is by a principle of give 
and take in neighboring communities. For 
example, in one of the Middle States there 
were two adjacent communities; in the 
one the Presbyterian Church was stronger 
and the Methodist Episcopal Church less 
strong, in the other community the Method- 
ist Episcopal Church was the stronger and 
the Presbyterian Church not so strong. 
139 



THE RURAL CHURCH MOVEMENT 

So an agreement was made to cooperate 
by consolidation in both places, using the 
surplus building for a community social 
center parish house, and the surplus funds 
for community extension work. Each de- 
nomination retained its own name and 
polity and both were stronger by the 
plan of change through cooperation. 

Still another method is that of the 
biological law of the survival of the fittest, 
taking this law in its Darwinian sense of 
adaptation to environment. In such cases 
there is an agreement on the part of the 
denominational "overhead" organizations to 
give no home mission funds to support a 
church that is not prepared to do a com- 
munity service, and merely wishes to pro- 
long its existence as a matter of local 
denominational pride, when conditions have 
long since so changed that some sister 
denomination is better adapted to do the 
religious work of the entire community. 
This church so equipped is given the 
right of way by interdenominational agree- 
ment, and the others simply die naturally, 
and ought to, for the good of the King- 
dom. 

140 



COOPERATION AND FEDERATION 

Church Federation 

This subject we will discuss more at 
length in the next chapter. It is difficult 
to secure because of the difference in re- 
ligious ideals and in varying stages of 
civilization in different parts of the 
country. 

Church federation will be brought about 
by the sociological law of associated activ- 
ities. The first stage in social adjustment 
is that of conflict which later changes to 
toleration among equals in the social 
struggle, and toleration leads to sympathy, 
and ultimately sympathy results in pleas- 
urable association of previously rival 
groups. 

The value of church federation thus far 
seems to have been in preventing over- 
lapping by rival denominations in new 
fields of church enterprise. There seems 
to have been a loss in some instances of 
new suburban towns where there is no 
church at all, because those most interested 
could not agree on the denomination best 
adapted for the new field. 

The value of an overhead organization, 
like the National Federal Council of 
141 



THE RURAL CHURCH MOVEMENT 

Churches of Christ in America, is that 
it leads to public discussion and the edu- 
cation of the social mind with reference 
to the need for federation; and, besides, 
it brings together in various commissions 
the leaders of the great denominations 
who shape the policy of these great bodies 
in dealing with any specific case of church 
federation that may arise. 

Real federation will ultimately come 
from the mass of the common people who 
learn to work together in solving other 
problems of the community, and thus 
discover the economic waste of overlapping 
in meeting the spiritual needs of the com- 
munity. The whole Rural Life movement, 
dominated by a religious spirit such as 
has pervaded it thus far, will greatly 
promote the cause of Christian federation 
among the rural churches, especially so 
if we can dominate its leadership by the 
same religious consciousness. 

Again, I believe a broader definition of 
the kingdom of God on earth, which 
will include more of the real factors en- 
gaged in the work of human betterment 
in every field, will hasten this desired 
142 



COOPERATION AND FEDERATION 

result. It is the duty of the rural leader 
to master for himself such a definition 
and to make it plain to those whom he 
leads; especially is this the duty of the 
country minister. 



143 



CHAPTER XI 

THE CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION IN 

THE RURAL CHURCH 

MOVEMENT 

Any work on the Rural Church move- 
ment would be incomplete if it left out 
of consideration the Christian Associations 
as a vital part of the movement. No 
religious leader in the Rural Life move- 
ment can study its plan of organization, 
talk with its leaders, and take an in- 
ventory of its achievements in so short 
a period since it was organized without 
being stirred by the thought of the possi- 
bilities for good in the church life of the 
open country of the County Work Depart- 
ment of the International Committee. 
What this institution is doing for the 
young men and boys in the country vil- 
lages, towns, and farming regions the 
Young Women's Christian Association is 
beginning to do for the young women 
and girls of the open country. 

The social function of this modern insti- 
144 



THE CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION 

tution as it applies to rural life is not 
unlike its function in other zones of human 
population, namely, to furnish a religious 
binder for all the useful and yet unmixable 
elements of Protestant Christianity. And 
some day I believe its function will be 
modified so as to include a wider syn- 
thesis of Greek, Roman, and Protestant 
groups of Christianity, and it is not too 
soon to begin to think of some such func- 
tion to bind together the great ethnic 
groups of Judaism and other Oriental 
faiths, when they shall have learned the 
redemptive purpose of the Son of man. 

Some years ago I met a man who was 
a manufacturer of cosmetics, who told me 
that beeswax was the "binder" of the 
unmixable elements used in making cold 
cream. Beeswax then cost forty-two cents 
per pound, and the endeavor of manu- 
facturers was to discover some cheaper 
substance that would answer the same 
purpose as a "binder" and at the same 
time keep the combination of elements 
sweet and useful. 

Now no one doubts the value of the 
great religious groups that are doing work 
145 



THE RURAL CHURCH MOVEMENT 

in rural communities; but we all know 
that a greater work can be done when we 
get them all working in combination, so 
that old sores are healed and the whole 
complexion of society is changed and beauti- 
fied. It may cost something to do it, 
but the results have justified the outlay. 

Cheaper binders in cosmetics soon dete- 
riorate and leave a bad odor to the whole 
mixture. So with some cheaper forms of 
church federation; unless based upon fun- 
damental principles of community service and 
trained leadership, they often leave the 
community with a worse complexion, re- 
ligiously considered, than before. 

The population of our rural domain is 
becoming more and more heterogeneous in 
community groups as a result of the new 
immigration, and this includes even reli- 
gious denominations from the countries of 
Europe with all their historic lines of 
cleavage and causes of antagonism. 1 It 
is therefore becoming more and more 
necessary that we have some form of 
organization in the religious life of these 
rural communities that can act as a binder 



See Shriver, Immigrant Forces, Chapter viii. 

146 



THE CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION 

and coordinator of all the religious forces 
of the community. 

The Christian Association, in my judg- 
ment, has a special function for such a 
condition in the Rural Church movement, 
and is best adapted for the task of doing 
the religious work in the rural communities 
that no other agency is doing, or can do 
without adopting a similar program. 

The Practical Points of Its Program 

1. It has taken essentially the parish 
plan in choosing the county as a unit of 
organization, and the natural community 
center as a base of operations. This gives 
the Association a base of operations that 
corresponds to the local and historic plan 
of developing a community plan of co- 
operation. 

2. It insists upon educated leadership, 
choosing as a standard the college grad- 
uate or the university-trained man. And 
even he, in signing his contract of service, 
must agree to attend at least one summer 
school for practical training in methods of 
rural leadership. 

3. It guarantees these men a living 

147 



THE RURAL CHURCH MOVEMENT 

salary, and shows them how to get it, 
so that they are never at a loss to know 
how to finance any proposition they need 
to "put across" in their fields of work. 
They follow the method of Jesus in the 
instructions he gave to the twelve in his 
program for the country tour recorded in 
Matthew, "Search out who in it is worthy," 1 
which is advice the modern church leader 
in the country should follow to avoid 
entangling alliances with the village gossips. 

4. It serves the needs of the men and 
boys of the whole community by organizing 
the recreational and play life of the boys 
and young men, by inspiring them in 
wholesome economic rivalry, as in corn- 
growing contests, in stock-breeding, in 
poultry-raising, and such like. 

5. It bases its work upon Bible study 
and prayer for the individual boy and 
young man, as well as for the group in 
classes. During the summer school at 
Silver Bay last summer (August, 1913) 
sixty men in the County Work Depart- 
ment, like other groups, met for prayer 
and Bible study at six-thirty every morn- 

iMatt. 10. 11. 

148 



THE CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION 

ing for two weeks. As a member of the 
faculty I had to go to save my self-respect. 

6. It does its work not as a rival of 
the churches, but as a strong yoke-fellow 
with the churches; doing always those 
kinds of religious work that the churches 
cannot do, or are not doing. I attended 
the annual dinner of one of the County 
Associations in New England last October 
(1913) at which twelve of the leading 
country ministers of several denominations 
of the county were present and in sym- 
pathetic accord. 

7. It looks after the physical life of the 
country boy and teaches him to observe 
the laws of health and physical develop- 
ment. It develops in a community a 
wholesome public opinion with reference to 
the sanitary conditions of the schools and 
public buildings; and creates a demand 
for public recognition of the value of 
organized play and wholesome amusements 
in public centers. 

8. In all its public conferences and 
conventions the Association uses the great 
hymns of the church, gives place upon 
its platforms and programs to the great 

149 



THE RURAL CHURCH MOVEMENT 

spiritual leaders of the church, and gives 
no man a second chance publicly to make 
a fool of himself who does not believe 
in, and is not in hearty sympathy with 
the great essential doctrines of the Chris- 
tian faith. No man can stand before a 
great audience like those at Northfield 
or Silver Bay and hear that grand old 
hymn beginning, "The church's one founda- 
tion is Jesus Christ her Lord," sung by 
nearly a thousand young men who are 
to be religious leaders in every mission 
field of the world, at home and abroad, 
and say again, "The Association or the 
church," but he is compelled to say, 
"This is the church at work.' 9 

World Factors at Work, the Out- 
growth of the Christian Asso- 
ciation Movement 

I give these factors without attempt 
at chronological sequence: 

1. The Student Volunteer movement that 
enlists men and women of the colleges and 
universities and theological schools as volun- 
teers for the foreign fields of missionary 
150 



THE CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION 

enterprise, with a pledge to prepare them- 
selves as well as to go. 

2. The World Student Christian Federa- 
tion, under the statesmanlike leadership 
of John R. Mott and others, binding to- 
gether in one splendid organized force 
the best potential, if not the actual, Chris- 
tian leaders in the undergraduate body of 
the world's leading educational institution 
of higher learning. The momentum of 
this movement is already being felt in the 
Christian activities of the world, though 
the movement has had but time to get 
fairly started. 

3. The Missionary Education movement 
which is educating millions of children in 
the Sunday schools, and other millions of 
young men and women in the societies 
of the churches in missionary zeal, in 
giving and in knowing their world neigh- 
bors. Its propaganda this year for the 
study of "Immigrant Forces" leading to 
definite action by the churches toward the 
thousands of aliens at their very doors, 
has made already a lasting impression 
upon the young people of the churches, 
and will lead to a goodly harvest in due time. 

151 



THE RURAL CHURCH MOVEMENT 

4. The National Federal Council of 
Churches of Christ in America, not yet 
fully coordinated with all of the denomina- 
tions, but great in its possible outreach 
and with some splendid achievements to 
its credit, though handicapped in best 
opportunities by the very fact of the 
denominational consciousness of its con- 
stituent groups, which in time will be 
overcome by the development of the 
broader religious social consciousness 
through actual service, as has already 
become true of some of its subordinate 
groups, like the Social Service Commission, 
for instance. 

This great federation was made possible 
by men in these denominations who had 
been trained in the Christian Association 
atmosphere of university, college, city, 
town, and open country where the Asso- 
ciation idea was being worked. 

5. The International Committee of the 
Young Men's Christian Association, and of 
the Young Women's Christian Association, 
with all their world-wide activities repre- 
sented by coherently organized and intensely 
active departments, are in themselves a re- 

152 



THE CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION 

suit of the Association idea — the binder or 
coordinating factor in the greater Christian 
movement that is to make the kingdoms 
of this world (in spite of the discouraging 
facts to the contrary) the kingdoms of 
our Lord and of his Christ. 

So I believe the Rural Church move- 
ment has already worked out for it, through 
these various agencies, the ideas of an 
achieving program for the church of the 
open country, which, when worked by 
trained leadership, supported by an ad- 
equate home missions policy, and an intel- 
ligent educational system, in cooperation 
with all other rural social forces, will be 
able to dominate the leadership of the 
entire Rural Life movement, and thus 
make our new rural civilization Christian. 



153 



CHAPTER XII 

A SUGGESTED HOME MISSIONS 

POLICY FOR THE RURAL 

CHURCH MOVEMENT 

The field for church extension and home 
missions in this country includes three 
distinct zones of population, and presents 
three distinct problems for home mis- 
sions boards to solve by statesmanlike 
methods of administration: first, the cities, 
with their congested quarters sometimes 
designated by that ugly term, "the slum"; 
second, the suburbs, with a tendency to 
strong social contrasts of population groups, 
such as the well-to-do, automobile-riding, 
golf-playing fringe, possessing more or less 
valuable estates; the asparagus-growing, 
lawn-mowing inner belt, who own their 
homes and bring up their children; and the 
scattered nuclei of "natives," and Negroes 
and foreigners, who are in most cases a 
drag to municipal progress, especially in 
improvements for public service, and in 
education; third, the open country, com- 
154 



HOME MISSIONS POLICY 

prising our vast rural domain with its 
splendid individualism incompetent (with- 
out leadership) for the task of building 
up a splendid rural civilization because 
of isolation of its population units, and 
the lack of social consciousness and organ- 
ization. Each of these three zones of the 
national field needs a distinctively home 
missions policy, some of the chief points 
of which are common to all. But our task 
is to suggest a home missions policy for the 
third zone, which embraces over one half 
(fifty-three per cent) of the population of 
the United States, and the great resource 
fields from which the nation's industries 
and populous cities are fed, leaving a 
splendid surplus for exportation to other 
countries. 

I wish to present the reasons for a home 
missions policy in the rural field, and to 
outline the policy we have to suggest. 

The Reasons for a Definite Home 

Missions Policy in the 

Rural Field 

In the first place, we are perhaps aware 
that the pioneer period of the rural do- 
155 



THE RURAL CHURCH MOVEMENT 

main of this country is about past, and 
the method of the churches so successful 
in that period are no longer effective under 
the new conditions of the greater part 
of the open country. 

It is also to be observed by those who 
are alert to the movements of our time 
that rural civilization in this country is 
being rapidly reconstructed, and that the 
Rural Life movement is gaining fast in 
momentum, so that whatever the churches 
hope to do in molding this new civiliza- 
tion they must do quickly before the 
forms are set, and the social organization 
of rural life under other agencies than 
leadership of the church becomes more 
or less fixed in character. Other agencies 
in the rural field are now being organized 
and socialized upon a community basis of 
cooperation. Even the Department of 
Agriculture of the national government has 
organized a department of rural organiza- 
tion and cooperation in farm production 
and marketing, and has chosen a dis- 
tinguished economist and expert in the 
Rural Life movement, Professor Thomas 
Nixon Carver, of Harvard, to direct it. 
156 



HOME MISSIONS POLICY 

All the great leaders of the Rural Life 
movement admit that the country church 
is the most important factor in the solu- 
tion of the problem of the betterment of 
our rural civilization. 

In the second place, we have discovered 
by careful surveys in various parts of the 
country that the church is declining enor- 
mously in attendance in rural communities, 
and the membership is not increasing in 
proportion to the increase in population; 
and, in some sections, many rural com- 
munities that once supported a thriving 
church are now without religious services 
at all. (Eight hundred abandoned 
churches in Ohio, W. H. Wilson.) Gill 
and Pinchot, in their book on The Country 
Church, state as their serious judgment, 
after the most careful survey of the fields 
in scientific interpretation of the facts, 
"The great decline in church attendance 
in the open country is the most alarming 
fact developed by the investigation" (p. 18). 
And, to be more specific, they state that 
"church attendance in Windsor County 
(Vermont) fell off in twenty years nearly 
31 per cent, and in Tompkins County 
157 



THE RURAL CHURCH MOVEMENT 

(New York) 33 per cent, so that in the 
two counties together the attendance de- 
clined in proportion to membership in 
71 churches out of 85" (pp. 15, 16). 

The defeats of the church militant have 
never been due to frontal attack, even 
from the gates of hell — for "they shall 
not prevail against her" — but from her 
failure to guard the rear — or to hold the 
ground she has taken; so the hardest 
mission fields to-day for the church to 
adequately master are the lost home fields 
— the countries bordering on the Mediter- 
ranean, the downtown sections, and the 
stretches of our open country. None is 
more important and none so strategic as 
the lost rural domain. 

In 1910 there were over 49,000,000 
people living in rural territory and a little 
over 42,000,000 in urban territory. Only 
a little over 8,000,000 lived in towns (in- 
corporated) of less than 2,500, while there 
were over 41,000,000 of people living in 
the open country. That is to say, there 
were nearly as many people in the United 
States dwelling in the open country as 
there were in the cities of over 2,500. 
158 



HOME MISSIONS POLICY 

In the third place, there is a growing 
demand for Christian leadership, adequate 
equipment, and social machinery, and a 
new educational policy in country life 
to-day. All leaders in the Rural Life 
movement are convinced that character is 
the basis of any permanent result in the 
reconstruction of our rural civilization. 
We believe that the leadership demanded 
and sought after should be Christian, and 
unless we as a church adopt an adequate 
policy in dealing with the situation now 
confronting the rural churches, the Rural 
Life movement will lose one of its essential 
factors, and other organizations will seize 
our neglected opportunity and master its 
leadership. 

I had the opportunity last summer 
(1913) of lecturing on rural sociology and 
on the Country Church movement at 
two of the leading summer schools for 
rural leadership, the one at Cornell Uni- 
versity, where ninety leaders from all 
parts of the United States were present, 
and the other at Silver Bay, where over 
sixty men engaged in the County Work 
Department of the Young Men's Christian 
159 



THE RURAL CHURCH MOVEMENT 

Association were taking courses in training 
for rural leadership. While there was 
always manifest among these leaders keen- 
est sympathy for, and spirit of coopera- 
tion with the country ministers, yet there 
was a general consensus of opinion from 
every quarter that the country church, as 
a whole, is suffering from an inadequately 
trained ministry, lack of equipment for its 
work and an inadequate educational policy 
for community organization in church en- 
terprise. 

There are many splendid exceptions to 
this somewhat depressing description of the 
situation which encourage us in suggest- 
ing a home missions policy in the Rural 
Life movement. There are many cases 
where the real leader, who loves the open 
country and the church, has succeeded in 
building up a whole community without 
the assistance of any home missions 
board. 

But these are only exceptions. The 
fact remains that there is pressing need 
for a more adequate application of known 
methods of church work to the demands 
of human life in the open country. 
160 



HOME MISSIONS POLICY 

The Policy Outlined 
In outlining a home missions policy for 
the Rural Life movement I am not un- 
mindful of the faithful men on the boards 
of home missions who acknowledge the 
need of a change of method in administra- 
tion, but are tied up by constitutional 
limitations in the law in the church to 
which they belong, or are prevented by 
the natural conservatism of those who have 
been accustomed for years to do things 
in a certain way and are incapable of a 
change, even when shown that their 
methods are useless so far as permanent 
results are concerned. For example, it 
would have been difficult during the last 
two decades of the nineteenth century, 
when one of the most successful secre- 
taries of home missions and church exten- 
sion was saying, "We're building three a 
day, dear Tom," to convince him or 
the church at large that during the same 
period, as recent rural surveys have proven, 
we were losing practically three a day, 
so the net result in church extension in 
some rural sections, as has been shown 
in Iowa, Colorado, Missouri, Ohio, Mary- 
161 



THE RURAL CHURCH MOVEMENT 

land, and in New England, was on the 
minus side. 

1. Direct authority of overhead organiza- 
tion. In the first place, I believe there 
should be given to a strong overhead 
organization in home missions the author- 
ity and responsibility to work out a policy 
of direct action in the fields of need so 
that there could be no ecclesiastical twi- 
light zone, so to speak, where respon- 
sibility for results could hide away in the 
verbiage of annual reports. In other words, 
we must abolish the "pious pork barrel policy 
of appropriating home missions funds in 
lump sums to Conferences, synods, dioceses, 
etc., to be divided up by the districts and 
subdivided into dribs to support inefficient 
ministers, or competing moribund churches, 
or chapels in already overcrowded com- 
munities; and we must adopt a more 
statesmanlike plan of adequate appro- 
priations to needy fields where the rural 
survey has made known available resources, 
and a community movement has already 
secured trained leadership on the field 
to assure economic administration of a 
central parish plan. 

162 



HOME MISSIONS POLICY 

Apart from the above changes in the 
overhead organization, I would indicate 
four other factors of vital importance in 
a home missions policy for the Rural Life 
movement. Emphasis should be placed 
(1) upon trained leadership for the country 
church work; (2) upon a social center 
parish plan to supplant the old circuit 
system; (3) upon the rural social survey 
as an indispensable requirement for appro- 
priations of money and the inauguration 
of new work in the rural field; (4) upon 
Bible study courses, in the rural-mindedness 
of the Old and New Testament writers, 
for the students in our colleges, who are 
looking toward the ministry in the open 
country. 1 

2. Adequately trained leadership. In view 
of the new movement in rural education 
with the consolidated school under expert 
management by a college graduate trained 
for rural leadership, the State Farm Bureau 
and its extension work centering in rural 
communities, the keen graduate from the 
colleges of agriculture taking charge of 
farm management, and an educated woman 

1 See Chapter ii. 

163 



THE RURAL CHURCH MOVEMENT 

taking control of the domestic science and 
home economics department in the rural 
high school; and, besides these, the County 
Work secretaries of the Christian Asso- 
ciation building up whole communities upon 
the basis of the latest experiments in 
rural sociology which they have learned in 
colleges, universities and summer schools, 
for rural leadership, it becomes a matter 
of urgent haste that the home missions 
boards of the church lay supreme stress 
upon the education, training, and choice of 
religious leadership in the country churches. 
If as much money had been spent on 
training competent leaders for rural 
churches as has been spent on support- 
ing men untrained and inefficient for the 
tasks, we would not have now such an 
appalling record of church decline in rural 
regions. While eighty-five per cent of 
our ministers were born and reared in 
the country districts, we have by our 
educational policy been unconsciously, if 
not at times deliberately, educating them 
away from the country until few strong 
young men and women, until recently, 
ever thought of choosing the country 
164 



HOME MISSIONS POLICY 

church or school as their lifework. In 
fact, our whole educational system in col- 
lege, theological seminary, and public 
school, has been suffering from "urbanitis"; 
the city interest has swallowed up the 
country interest, and as a result our 
strongest men and women (with some 
splendid exceptions) have gone to the 
cities and large towns, and we have sent 
to the country churches in many cases 
the superannuates, the incompetents, or 
the novices, to guard and work this vast 
resource field of the Kingdom. In one of 
our Eastern States I asked some time ago 
a thrifty, up-to-date farmer how the church 
in his community was getting on, and 
this was his reply: "The man they have 
sent us this time hasn't get-up enough in 
him to eat our fried chicken." And I 
discovered in this same community that 
a clergyman of a sister denomination which 
has held the leading place socially in the 
country for a hundred years or more, 
was openly known to be addicted to the 
use of strong drink to excess. 

We should seek for volunteers in home 
missions in rural life and organize them 
165 



THE RURAL CHURCH MOVEMENT 

into study classes just as we have the 
volunteers for the foreign field and the 
city slums. Such leaders for the rural 
church field should be sought preferably in 
the colleges of agriculture among those who 
were born and brought up in the open 
country. They should have ability to 
sense and to perceive human needs, should 
possess a constructive imagination, so as 
to plan their work on a community basis, 
they should have engineering skill and 
tact in coordinating individuals and groups, 
so as to avoid social friction, and they 
should maintain a persistent purpose to 
win in a good cause. These are the es- 
sentials of all successful leadership. To 
illustrate the lack of ability to sense the 
needs of a rural community I give here the 
story of a young theologue who during 
his summer vacation was sent to supply 
a country parish in the hills of New 
Hampshire. Seeing the ground look some- 
what bare, and thinking the need was 
rain, he prayed that the Lord would send 
copious showers upon the parched ground. 
After the service was over an old farmer 
walked up and said, "My brother, we had 
166 



HOME MISSIONS POLICY 

a good rain yesterday; what we need up 
here just now is not rain, but manure." 

3. The social center parish plan. In the 
next place, all home mission enterprises 
in country life to-day must be based upon 
a community plan of service. I prefer to 
call it the social center parish plan} The 
reasons for this proposal are quite evident. 
The rural schools in all progressive States 
are being consolidated on a community 
plan; the Grange has its hall at some 
community center and the Christian Asso- 
ciations are organizing their work on this 
basis with the whole community as a unit. 

Again, we discover the interesting fact 
from surveys that have been made in 
rural communities that where the greatest 
amount of home missions funds have 
been expended has been in towns where 
there are five competing denominations 
rather than in one-church towns where 
there is no competition, or in no-church 
villages where new work is needed. Also 
we have discovered that the denomina- 
tion that was weakest in the pioneer 
period, when the old circuit system was 

1 See Chapter vii. 

167 



THE RURAL CHURCH MOVEMENT 

most effective, is the only denomination 
now gaining in membership and attendance, 
while at the same time, in one important 
community, the denomination that was 
leading in 1870, is now gaining in mem- 
bership by a smaller percentage than the 
other Protestant denominations, and has a 
less number of churches now than ten 
years ago. The former is organized on 
the central parish plan; the latter still 
uses the circuit system in rural communities. 
Space will not permit a detailed statement 
of the social center parish plan, 1 but we 
have furnished the facts and the plan 
which justify the adoption of this policy 
by home missions boards, namely, .not to 
give to any church enterprise in rural 
life which has not a workable plan for 
service to the entire community in coopera- 
tion with all other legitimate forces. 

Instead of trying to maintain the old 
circuit system which in many cases to-day 
simply means peddling the gospel on the 
rural free delivery plan, we should seek 
to establish in every natural community 
center a strong central parish that will 

1 See Chapter vii. 

168 



HOME MISSIONS POLICY 

attract the people from the countryside 
to a place where they can be adequately 
served on a wider community plan. Sunday 
schools can be held in the chapels or 
schoolhouses in remote places, and religious 
services Sunday evenings, conducted by 
the local preachers, elders, or laymen from 
the central parish, but all hold their mem- 
bership in the central parish, where a well- 
trained minister can inspire and lead a 
whole community. One of the best exam- 
ples of this plan now working is the Cen- 
tral Parish of the Presbyterian church of 
Hanover Township, Morris County, New 
Jersey, under the leadership of the Rev. 
R. H. M. Augustine. 

4. The rural social survey. In the next 
place, we would suggest that the rural 
social survey be made the indispensable 
basis of all appropriations of home mis- 
sion funds either for old, or for new, enter- 
prises in the country districts. And not 
only so, but we must, by actual portrayal 
of the facts, produce a moral equivalent 
of the war spirit of the pioneer period. 
Such a policy has produced the student 
volunteer for the foreign fields. 
169 



THE RURAL CHURCH MOVEMENT 

The results of the rural social survey, 
when properly presented, will furnish the 
basis for such an appeal as will enlist a 
new type of men for the task of redeem- 
ing our lost rural domain for the kingdom 
of God. 

The character and function of the rural 
church and of the country minister must 
both be made to harmonize with the actual 
conditions discovered by the survey. 

5. Bible study courses in the rural-minded- 
ness of the prophets and of Jesus. Again, 
such a policy must include the adoption 
of Bible study courses based upon the 
rural-mindedness of the writers of the 
Old and New Testaments — especially that 
of the prophets and of Jesus. One reason 
for this recommendation, as has already 
been stated, 1 is the fact that the country 
folk are extremely conservative about 
adopting any new methods in church work 
unless they can be convinced of their 
scriptural sanction; and to win their sup- 
port is the nub of the whole Rural Life 
movement so far as securing the coopera- 
tion and support of the country people is 

1 See Chapter ii. 

170 



HOME MISSIONS POLICY 

concerned. Another reason for such study 
is that we find in the Scriptures the record 
of social surveys in rural regions that are 
in principles actual models for us to-day. 

These are in my judgment the five 
points of emphasis in an adequate home 
mission policy for the church of the open 
country. 

In addition to these I would like to see 
several scholarships in the Country Church 
movement established in all the Confer- 
ences, presbyteries, synods, dioceses, and 
other like ecclesiastical bodies for the use 
of picked young men to study the entire 
rural field under the direction of the 
theological seminaries of the church for 
the next five years, so that many of our 
best-trained men may be led to choose 
deliberately their life ministry in the open 
country, and thus help make the Rural 
Life movement Christian, and help the 
church at large to work out a home mis- 
sions and church extension policy that 
will adequately meet the problems of our 
vast rural domain in which dwell more 
than half the good people of our beloved 
land. 

171 



SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Rural Life Movement 

Bailey, Liberty H. — The Country Life Movement in the 

United States. The Macmillan Company, 1911. 
Carver, T. N. — Principles of Rural Economics. Ginn & Co., 

Boston, 1911. 
Plunkett, Sir Horace — The Rural Life Problem in the 

United States. The Macmillan Company, 1910. 
Butterfield, Kenyon L. — Chapters in Rural Progress. 

University of Chicago Press, 1908. 
Report of the Commission on Country Life. Sturgis, 

Walton & Co., New York, 1910. 
Foght, H. W. — The American Rural School. The Macmillan 

Company, 1910. 
Hart, Joseph K. — Educational Resources of Village and 

Rural Communities. The Macmillan Company, 1913. 
Eggleston and Bruere — The Work of the Rural School. 

Harper & Brothers, Publishers, New York, 1913. 
Gillette, John M. — Constructive Rural Sociology. Sturgis 

& Walton Company, 1913. 
Fiske, G. Walter — The Challenge of the Country. Associa- 
tion Press, New York, 1912. 
Country Life — March, 1912, The Annals of American 

Academy Political and Social Science, Philadelphia, 

Pennsylvania. 

The Country Church Movement 

Butterfield, Kenyon L. — The Country Church and the 
Rural Problem. University of Chicago Press, 1911. 

Bricker, Garland A. — Solving the Country Church Prob- 
lem. Jennings & Graham, Cincinnati, 1913. 

172 



SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Gill, C. Otis, and Pinchot, Gifford — The Country Church. 
The Macmillan Company, 1913. 

Wilson, Warren H. — The Church of the Open Country. 
Eaton & Mains, 1911. 

The Country Church and Community Cooperation. As- 
sociation Press, 1913. 

The Country Church and Rural Welfare. Association 
Press, 1912. 

Tipple, Ezra Squier — Some Famous Country Parishes. 
Eaton & Mains, 1911. 

Rural Church Message (Men and Religion Movement). 
The Association Press, New York, 1912. 



173 



INDEX 



Activity, socializing a com- 
munity in, 104 

Adaptation to environment, 
140 

Agriculture, Department of 
developing leadership, 29 
bulletins issued by, 55 
State Department of, 56, 
its aid in awakening need 
of leadership in Rural Life 
Movement, 95; a depart- 
ment of rural organizations 
formed in, 156 

Agricultural science, 52 

Amherst, summer school at, 
95 

Anderson, Dr. Wilbert L., 72 

Augustine, Rev. R. H. M., 



Bailey, Director Liberty H., 
cited, 33, 72, 87 

Baptists, 59 

Bethsaida, 41 

Binder, religious, 145; need 
of, 146 

Biological law, 140 

Board, Presbyterian, organ- 
izer of bureaus of country 
life, 29; survey of, 94; 
church of, at Hanover 
Township, New Jersey, 169 

Boston, 87 

Bowdoin College, 87 

Bureau of Education of Fed- 

i eral Government aid in 
awakening need of leader- 
ship in Rural Life Move- 
ment, 95 

Butterfield, President Ken- 
yon L., cited, 33, 87; 
quoted, 88 



Canaan, land of, 36 
Canada, cooperation in, 139 
Capernaum, 41 
Carnegie Institute, cited, 89 
Cartwright, Peter, cited, 64 
Carver, Professor Thomas N., 

quoted, 98; referred to, 135, 

156 
Charlemagne, 51 
Chorazin, 41 
Circuit rider, a necessary 

social agent, 67 
Colorado, survey in, 161 
Cologne Cathedral, skulls of 

martyrs in, 51 
Commission on Country Life, 

report of, 13; quoted, 22, 

88; referred to, 72, 87 
Commuters, cited, 111 
Consciousness of the church, 

77; group socialized in, 78; 

dawning religious, 79; 

needs brought into, 83; 

awakening of national, 90; 

community socialized in, 

103 
Cornell University, cited, 72; 

summer school at, 95, 

159 
Country church movement, 

scriptural basis for, 34 
Country Gentleman, The, 

referred to, 56, 93 

Danube River, referred to, 49 

Darwinian law, 140 

Department of Public Edu- 
cation, developing leader- 
ship, 29 

Domestic science, controlled 
by the educated woman, 
163 



174 



INDEX 



Dugdale, cited, 86 
Dyke, cited, Samuel, 87 

Eastern States, conditions in, 
17; some happenings in, 18 

East Friesland, 57 

Economics, 52 

Eden, garden of, 42 

Education, Department of 
Public, developing leader- 
ship, 29 

Educational agencies, co- 
operation of the, 138 

Efficiency, basis of for or- 
ganizations and institu- 
tions, 123 

Elba River, referred to, 49 

Elijah, cited, 64 

Estes Park, 95 

Europe, immigration from, 
146 

Evangelism, directed toward 
adults, 78 

Fairbanks, Rev. Henry, cited, 

87 
Finance, rural, 81 
Financial plan needed, 105 
Franconia, cited, 57 

Genesis, 42 

Geneva, Wisconsin, summer 

school at, 95 
Gill, C. O., survey of, 67, 73; 

survey quoted, 73, 74, 75, 

76; referred to, 157 
Gladden, Washington, cited, 

33 
Gloucester, England, social 

condition of children in, 109 
Goddard, Dr., cited, 86 
Gospel, of Matthew, 46; 

Mark, 47; Luke, 47 
Grange, leadership in the, 21; 

unite community work 

with, 27; hall of at center 

of community, 167 



Greek Christianity, referred 

to, 120, 145 
Gulf States, surveys in, 17 

Harvard University, cited, 

156 
Hesse, 57 

Higgins, sky pilot, cited, 64 
Holstein, Germany, 57 
Hookworm disease, 89 
Hyde, President W. DeWitt, 

cited, 72, 87 

"Immigrant Forces, ,, propa- 
ganda for study of, 151 
Indiana, surveys in, 17 
Indians, hostile tribes of, 62 
Industrialism, growth of, 77 
International Committee of 
the Young Men's Chris- 
tian Association, 144, 152 
Iowa, survey in, 161 

John the Baptist, 64 
Jukes, The, 86 

Kalikak family, the, 86 

Kentucky, 47 # 

Kidd, Benjamin, referred to, 

33 
Knox, John, referred to, 64 

Lambert, cited, 56; churches 
organized by during Refor- 
mation, 56 

Leadership, spiritual, 14; how 
developed, 28; religious and 
political, 31; during Lu- 
theran Reformation, 56; 
school for rural, 95; edu- 
cated insisted on, 147; 
need for Christian, 159; 
essentials of, 166 

Liquor traffic, prohibition of, 
127; Local option, 127 

Luneburg, 57 



175 



INDEX 



Luther, 56; churches organ- 
ized by during Reforma- 
tion, 56 

Martyrs, planted in German 
soil, 50; need of to-day, 51 

Maryland, survey in, 161 

Mathews, Shailer, cited, 33 

Mediterranean, lost home 
fields on, 158 

Melanchthon, trained for 
leadership, 56; churches 
organized by during Refor- 
mation, 58 

Methodists, 59 

Methodius, cited, 51 

Middle West, 17 

Minnesota, 61 

Ministry, inferior rural, 79; 
source of supply, 90; coun- 
try suffering from un- 
trained, 160 

Missouri, surveys in, 17, 161 

Missionaries of Pre-Reforma- 
tion period, 51 

Missionary Education Move- 
ment, 151 

Montana, 61; preacher in, 64 

Moravians, 51 

Moses, 36 

Mott, Dr. John R., cited, 
121; leadership of, 151 

Napoleon, return of from 
Elba, 30 

National Federal Council of 
Churches of Christ in 
America, 141, 152 

Nazareth, 46 

New England, surveys in, 17, 
72, 162; County Associa- 
tion in, 149 

New Hampshire, 76 

New Jersey, surveys in, 17, 
73; referred to, 87; church 
at Hanover Township, 



New York, surveys in, 73; 
referred to, 87; Tompkins 
County survey, 157 

Oberlin, John Frederick, 

cited, 67 
Ohio, minister in, quoted, 54; 

survey in, 161 
Oregon, 61 

Palestine, rural, 41 

Paris, 30 

Paul, 102 

Peabody, Francis, cited, 33 

Peasants' War, 50 

Pennsylvania, churches in one 
city of the State, 136 

Pinchot, Hon. Gilford, cited, 
33; survey of, 67, 73; sur- 
vey quoted, 73, 74, 75, 76, 
157; referred to, 87 

Plunkett, Sir Horace, cited, 
33, 87; quoted, 88 

Population, rural, 15; Ger- 
man, 50; modern as di- 
vided, 111; heterogeneous, 
146; zones of, 154 

Prussia, 57 

Psychology, functional, 24 

Raiffeissen Banking System 

in Germany, 60 
Raikes, Robert, cited, 109 
Rauschenbusch, Walter, 

cited, 33 
Revelation, vision recorded 

in, 42 
Rhine River, valley of the, 49 
Roberts, Albert E., cited, 33 
Rockefeller Institute, referred 

to, 89 
Roman Catholic, 120, 145 
Roosevelt, President, Com- 
mission on Country Life, 

appointed by, 13 
Rupert in Bavaria, cited, 

51 



176 



INDEX 



Rural civilization, recon- 
structed, 156 

Rural Life Problem of the 
United States, The, 
quoted, 88 

Rural New Yorker, 56, 93 

Saturday Evening Post, re- 
ferred to, 93 

Saxony, 56 

Schapley, Mr., survey made 
by, 73 

Schleswig, 57 

Scholarships in Country 
Church movement, 171 

Science, agricultural, 52; do- 
mestic, 164 

Scriptures, referred to, 34; 
quoted, 36, 40, 41, 42, 148 

Silesia, 57 

Silver Bay, summer school at, 
95, 148, 159 

Sky pilots of lumber camps, 
61; mentioned, 64 

Sociological law, 83; of asso- 
ciated activities, 141 

Social cleavage, recognized in 
the Sunday school, 117 

Social stratification, 118 

Southern States, surveys in, 
17; leader from, 23 

Suburbs, 154 

Sunday school, rural, 21; 
founding of, 109 

Sunday, observance of, 114 

State Farm Bureau, 163 



Student Volunteer Move- 
ment, 150 

Tennessee, surveys in, 17 
Tompkins County (New 

York), 157 
Tyringham, Massachusetts, 

134 

Urban movement, 77 

Vermont, surveys in, 73 

Victor, Montana, 133 

Volunteers, seeking for, 52; 
examination of recom- 
mended, 138 

Washington, State of, 61 
Wieser, river, valley of the, 49 
Wilson, Warren H., cited, 87 
Windsor County, Vermont, 

157 
Winfrid (Boniface), 51 
Woden, worshiper of, 51 
World's Christian Student 

Federation, 121, 151 

Young Men's Christian Asso- 
ciation, 21 ; developing 
leadership in, 29; in Ger- 
many, 59; surveys by, 73; 
summer conferences of, 95; 
referred to, 128 

Young Women's Christian 
Association, 21; work with 
girls in the open country, 
144 



177 



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